Vengeful Phoenix
by Shutterbug5269
Summary: My entry for the 2013 Ficathon . Set primarily in the future, nearly a decade after season five. Crippled after the events of Probable Cause, Jerry Tyson plots his revenge on Castle and Beckett. I would like to thank Dtrekker (aka Detective Angie) for the lovely cover art.
1. Prologue

**Chapter One**  
**Prologue**

November 21st 2012

Jerry Tyson lay in the carefully concealed attic bedroom of his "girlfriend's" (her term not his, he didn't, nor would he ever feel anything for such a simpering submissive weakling) 200 year old farmhouse in Upstate, New York, west of Albany, contemplating his future and his next move.

Caroline had been in place to retrieve him, exactly where he had told her to be to do his bidding. She had pulled his broken body from the river and tended his wounds as she drove him to Albany and the hospital where she worked. She even saw to it that the police notification of his gunshot wounds was mishandled as a hunting accident. Then nursed him back to health, such as it is.

He hadn't allowed for the possibility of being crippled for life from the hundred foot drop from the bridge deck and the impact with the East River. Not to mention the two bullets that had not been stopped by his police issue body armor. One of which had lodged in his spine, cutting off the use of his legs.

Caroline had always been a means to an end. She had been very carefully selected from the mass of other weak willed prison groupies that, for whatever reason found themselves attracted to men like him. He had broken her to his will shortly after his escape from custody in the basement of this very house. She would never defy or disobey him as she no longer knew how.

Caroline's grandparents were wealthy, and as their only heir she stood to inherit everything. He saw to it they had a terrible accident on the New York State Thruway, then added a little "something extra" into their morphine drip in the hospital. The secluded farmhouse was an invaluable asset. From here he had been able to plot his torment of Detective Kevin Ryan and his revenge campaign against Richard Castle.

The fool had managed to foil his plan to slip away free and clear when he caught on to his game, in spite of the fact that even that bitch in the stripper heels had fallen for his patsy, hook line and sinker. That he, Jerry Tyson was in fact the triple killer.

His anonymity had been his shield and Richard Castle had stolen it from him.

For that, he had needed to pay.

He had a substantial inheritance from his mother's estate which he took great pains never to spend on himself. The _bitch _had left him everything, still wanted him under her thumb, even from the grave. He didn't want her money, he didn't want anything of hers. He would, however gladly use it to spit on everything she had ever paid lip service to believing in, which she beaten into him at every possible opportunity. He had more than enough money to fund his revenge against Richard Castle.

His plot had not gone as planned, however.

For reasons he simply could not fathom, the files he had added to Castle's laptop and the evidence he had planted in his home had not broken the bond of trust between writer and muse like he had planned it to. Beckett wasn't supposed to believe him, she was supposed to believe the evidence, all of which had been carefully crafted to point directly at Richard Castle. She wasn't supposed to find out that he had been framed until _after_ his death in the tombs.

It was the linchpin of the whole plan, and it _should_ have worked. He could not understand how his manipulations had not had the desired result. In anyone else they would have. In her grief stricken state it should have been child's play to manipulate her into "killing" him on that bridge.

He had wanted his anonymity back, his apparent "death" would give it to him.

Castle had queered everything by escaping from custody. His plan had unraveled from there. Even his exit strategy had been a flawed success. He was believed dead to be sure, but it no longer mattered because he was trapped in a broken body unable to fully enjoy his newly won freedom. He had simply traded one prison for another.

He was a paraplegic, trapped in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, only his sharp calculating mind still intact. A mind now dedicated to a single purpose.

Vengeance.

He would live long enough to know he had broken them, made them suffer. Not by killing them, that would be far too easy. Nor would he make the mistake of trying to break the bond between them. He would instead use that very bond against them. He would break them both by destroying what they cherish most. He would die knowing he had won.

They would live knowing their lives would forever be in ruins.

* * *

May 14th 2016

Morning for Richard Castle and Kate Beckett began much like any other since their marriage two years ago. A phone call from dispatch to Kate's cell phone informing her that a body had dropped in an alley at 5th and Lexington. She looked over at her husband and partner, still sleeping peacefully next to him. He always seemed so very peaceful when he slept, and she so hated to wake him.

They had taken yesterday off to mark the 3rd anniversary of his proposal on what they had dubbed "their" swings. She had said yes, and turned down the job offer in DC, though she hadn't expected them to make the full court press to get her to change her mind, even offering to include Castle, but she had made her decision.

She loved Castle dearly, but to this day, still harbored a small amount of resentment over turning down that job. Especially as she now seemed to be stagnating on the promotion grid here in New York. The move up or move out mentality had been in full swing at One PP, turning down that job had caused her a number of headaches, but she loved Rick far too much to let that get in the way of an otherwise happy, flourishing marriage.

They had put off setting a date that whole first year of their engagement, much to Lanie's consternation, and in spite of Ryan and Esposito's constant ribbing. (not to mention an office pool) Dr. Burke had suggested a very well respected couple's therapist and they spent that entire year working on their communication issues, their separate and combined insecurities about each other, and their equally debilitating and deep seated abandonment issues.

They worked through her issues with letting people in and his fear of marriage. They shed tears over her dead mother, his absent father, her father's bout with alcoholism and Meredith's infidelity (which had led to the dissolution of his first marriage) and the poor reasoning behind his second marriage with Gina and why it had been doomed from the start.

Every issue in their shared and separate pasts that might possibly creep up to interfere in their marriage when they finally walked down the aisle was brought up, dissected and discussed, including her resentment about giving up the job in DC.

Resentment that she knew now was entirely moot, given that it had been a ruse manufactured by Senator Bracken to get her out of New York to his own turf where he could kill her more readily. A plot that had only been revealed after Bracken had finally been taken down. All because the Attorney General had been caught accepting bribes and spilled his guts to a grand jury.

It had seemed anticlimactic that her mother had finally gotten justice second hand because of a corruption scandal, but not having her mother's case hanging over her head had finally set her free from the last vestiges of her walls.

She and Castle had gotten married six weeks later.

* * *

When they finally arrived an air of melancholy had settled over the scene, especially when LT caught sight of Castle. Before he could comment they had breezed past him and under the crime scene tape leading up to the scene, oblivious to what thy would find there.

Before they could approach the body, Lanie caught sight of them and rose to head them off.

"Kate...I don't think you two should go in there...especially not Rick." she said softly, she never used his first name, which set off the first alarm bells in Rick's brain.

"What is it, Lanie?" he said gruffly, his voice rising in fear, his mind going back to a white van four years ago, a large blood pool inside and Alexis was gone, "What don't you want me to see?"

The shorter woman tried to hold him back, but he brushed past her violently and Kate was out of position to get in his way as he quick stepped over to the covered body. He crouched down and lifted the tarp laid across it to preserve evidence to reveal the face of Martha Rodgers, her sightless eyes staring up into nothing and he recoiled back in shock and pain.

"Mom...no...mom...oh dear God...no...please no..." he muttered helplessly like a little boy as he staggered back into a dumpster and glancing off before backing into the alley wall where his knees finally buckled under his weight.

"No-no-no-no-no-no"

Kate was on him in an instant, cradling him in her arms like a small child. He was staring at his mother's dead face, almost serene in death.

"no no no no no no...oh god...mother...no.." he muttered silently over and over again as she knelt beside him, rocking him back and forth.

After a moment he shook free of her embrace and rose shakily to his feet, to once again kneel beside the lifeless body of his mother.

In a scene that would be burned into her brain for the rest of her life, Kate watched helplessly as Rick softly smoothed his mother's hair, gently slid her sightless eyes closed, and kissed her on the forehead and replaced the tarp over her face before he finally broke down sobbing as Kate gently pulled him to his feet and led him away from the crime scene and back down the alley.

Every officer they passed on the way back to her car took of their cap and bowed their head in a show of condolence and respect as she led a sobbing Richard Castle from the scene of his mother's death.

He would never again work an active homicide case.

There was no new evidence, other than an anomalous DNA sample at the scene that wasn't in the system, even fewer leads and a few weeks later the case went cold.

* * *

When Jerry Tyson read the sizable obituary in the paper for Martha Elizabeth Rodgers in the New York Times he chuckled out loud. From his sources he knew that Richard Castle had been taken out of play.

Phase one was complete.


	2. The End of An Era

**Chapter Two**  
**The End of an Era**

The public funeral for Martha Rodgers was every bit as over the top a production number as the woman had been herself in life. Luminaries of the Broadway stage who had at any point in time worked or played with his mother during the past forty five years showed up.

He stood in the appropriate place at the head of the receiving line and nodded when people spoke to him, but the thank yous were handled by Kate. Since that night in the alley four days ago he hadn't spoken a single word to anyone, not even to her and it was killing her inside to know he was in such undeniable agony.

It was as if he was there and yet the part of him that really mattered, his heart, was a thousand miles away. His countenance betrayed nothing, like he had erected a wall of his own to keep the world at bay, even his own daughter. Kate didn't like it one bit, in fact it tore her heart out to watch. When the service began he simply sat and stared at the open casket, his face a mask of stone only his eyes betraying the emotions roiling inside of him. Eyes Kate wished she couldn't read so well

Though everyone in attendance had expected him to do so, Richard Castle did not give the eulogy. That task had instead fallen upon a teary eyed Alexis Castle who had only been done with classes for a few days from Columbia University when Detectives Ryan and Esposito had showed up at the door of her studio apartment in SoHo to give her the news that would change her life forever. Her stirring eulogy ended in the same spirit of her high school Valedictory address several years before.

"_...but just because we have to move on without her, and it hurts, Grams is so much a part of us, she'll be with us...no matter what...our solid ground...our North Star...and...the small clear voice...in our hearts that will be with us...always. Au revoir grand-mère, I love you and I will miss you."_

Alexis Castle's control finally slipped and she burst into tears at the podium, her choking sobs could be heard across the entire funeral parlor, for the first time cutting through the stunned silent spell that her father had been in for the past four days. He rose from his seat to comfort his little girl with Kate close on his heels. Alexis fell into his arms without prompting as he wrapped her up in his embrace and held onto her for dear life.

Kate stood a few inches away, not sure what to do, she felt almost like an intruder, and interloper much like she had all those years ago in front of the shattered facade of New Amsterdam Bank and Trust, until she saw Alexis looking at her with the same teary eyed expression she had that day so long ago, this time holding out her small, slender hand to beckon the detective in.

Both Rick and his daughter wrapped an arm around her and all three of them stood in front of the podium sobbing and shedding tears for the force of nature that had once been Martha Rodgers, now forever silenced.

Nobody noticed a man sitting in a wheelchair with a black blanket on his lap matching his black Armani suit at the back of the funeral parlor, a woman dressed in a nurse's uniform holding the wheelchair's handles. Jerry Tyson, a fake beard and horn rimmed glasses disguising his features watched the scene playing out before him at the podium, barely able to keep the grin off of his face.

He had signed the register using the name Jameson Rook, just like he had done with the name plate on the police uniform back then. He had even gotten through the receiving line without Castle or even Beckett recognizing him. Even he was amazed at how people only seemed to see the chair, wondering why he had never used this particular ruse before.

_'Soon,' _ he thought, _'soon the time will come to burn down your happy little world. Soon, but not yet.'_

He nodded to Caroline and she turned the wheelchair to roll them out. Secure in the knowledge that everything was going according to plan.

Another man, this one crowding seventy with white hair and intense eyes stood with his back to the wall watching his son, daughter in law and granddaughter break down together in front of the podium tears of sadness welling in his own eyes. Jackson Hunt had filed all of his retirement paperwork the day before she had been killed. He had finally come home after forty eight years only to find he had come home too late.

If he ever found the man responsible for Martha's to death in that alley, he would use every torture technique he had ever learned or heard of in his years with the CIA to make sure the piece of shit had a short very unhappy life tagged by as long, slow, painful a death as he could dream up, and he could dream pretty damn dark.

He slipped out of the funeral parlor, and stopped to sign the register with the name Jackson Hunt. For the first time in ages he wanted his family to know he had been here. Even if guilt had kept him at arm's length. The CIA may have finally put him out to pasture, but he still knew people, still had resources, contacts, people who owed him favors and a frighteningly high security clearance.

He was a man on a mission and just like when Volkov took Alexis, this time the mission was his own.

* * *

Two Weeks later

Kate Beckett, was signing the guest register at Riker's Island to visit Former Senator William Bracken (now inmate 11638) He was sentenced to prison in Ossining, but had been temporarily moved to Rikers to be deposed about his involvement in the Ghost crew scandal. It had been the plea bargain he had made to reduce his sentence and have lethal injection off of the table. It was strange that New York City was finally looking into that mess now that nearly all of the players were either dead or in in prison.

It felt strange to be sitting in the same waiting area where she had once sat across from Hal Lockwood, knowing that this time she would be speaking to the architect of it all, and for once about something other than the case that had defined her for most of her adult life. When the guard led him into the room in chains, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, she did derive a certain satisfaction that killing him herself would not have given her.

"Did you come here to gloat, Detective? You didn't strike me as the type. Or were you merely disappointed the that the FBI beat you to the punch?" he said with the same infuriating calm he had shown when she had first confronted him with a gun pointed at his head in a deserted hotel kitchen so long ago.

"_...you're a disgraced cop obsessed with her mother's murder, and who am I? I'm a decent man looking out for the little guy."_

"_It's not who has the gun, it's who has the power. Do you really think that's you?"_

He seemed for all the world like he still had the power, still held all of the cards. She closed her eyes for a moment to push back her own feelings of anger and righteous indignation. When she opened them again, both Katie Beckett and Katherine Castle were gone, replaced by Detective Kate Beckett in full interrogation room mode.

He was no longer Senator William Bracken, the man who had contracted the death of her mother and had secretly pulled the strings of her life for over thirteen years. He was no longer the Washington DC power broker who had sent a highly trained assassin to kill her, not once but twice. He was now a convicted felon whom she was interrogating for information on a current homicide.

She removed a photo from the file folder she had with her of Martha Rodgers' crime scene, her face betraying none of the emotions she was feeling for her self, her husband and former partner, and his daughter, and slid the photo in front of the man without looking at it. (a photo eerily similar to a crime scene photo that had once adorned the shuttered kitchen window of her previous apartment) She couldn't bear to look at it if she was going to keep her composure.

"Did you do this? Did you put out a hit on Richard Castle's mother to send me some sick message from in here?" she asked.

She already knew that the wound pattern was inconsistent with her mother's murder, or the others that Dick Coonan had committed, nor did they seem to be attributable to professional killers like Cole Maddox or Hal Lockwood. The initial stab wounds had been far too shallow, as if the killer was inexperienced at killing with a knife or any other type of weapon.

Still didn't put it past him, nor could she fathom that this was a random spree killing or a _"random wayward event_,_"_ it hit just a little too close to home. She had been barred from taking primary on the case almost since the beginning, due to her personal involvement with the family, _"hell Martha was family"_ she thought to herself, but she had to play out this hunch if she wanted to be able to sleep at night.

"Detective," Bracken replied with that condescending tone he had used with her after she had saved his life three years ago,

"If I was going to call in what few favors I have left in the halls of power, expend the kind of resources necessary to put out a hit from inside of a federal penitentiary, do you _really_ think you would be alive to ask me these questions? If it were me, it would be you dead in that alley, and I think that deep down, you already know that. On that note I think we're done here."

What was worse, was that Kate Beckett knew he was right. Such a hit would not get him out of here, it would more than likely triple his stay, ordering a hit on a cop, even if it was unsuccessful, would earn him a lot more style points and respect in here with the other inmates than killing an elderly Broadway diva turned acting coach would have.

Bracken called for the guard, and as he was marching him out the door in lockstep, her turned and said the final words that would ever be spoken between them.

"Detective, for what it's worth, please offer my deepest sympathies to Mr. Castle and his daughter. I really was a fan of his mother's work."

As soon as he was removed from the room and she was sure nobody but the single security camera could see she allowed a single tear to trail down her cheek. She had expended her last lead, her only lead and the official investigation had ground to a halt a week ago due to lack of evidence.

The Martha Rodgers Homicide had officially gone cold. Leaving an emotionally devastated Richard Castle, an angry determined Alexis Castle in it's wake. She only hoped that she was up to the task of helping them pick up the pieces of their lives an move on.

She could take care of Rick, and if not get him back to the precinct at least get him functioning as a writer and human being again, it would take time, but she loved him enough to put in the work. He would have done no less for her. She owed it to Martha's memory to try. The Lieutenant's exam was opening up and Captain Gates had recommended her for it, just as Roy Montgomery had done years before. Now she had a reason to accept. The more regular hours would offer her more time at home.

She was most worried about Alexis who was showing signs of heading down the same path she had at nineteen. She had already filed the paperwork to transfer from Columbia to NYU with a change of major to Criminal Justice and forensic science. She would do her best to make sure she had made the right choice for herself and her potential.

Kate didn't want the girl to end up like she had been when her father first met her. An emotional cripple, seeing the world only as it pertained to the case that had defined her for over thirteen years. Shepherd her through the worst of her bad decisions mentor the girl like Roy Montgomery had done for her.

She deserved so much better, and she swore on Martha Rodgers memory that she would not let what happened to her to happen to Alexis too.

"Not again...mother, I won't let history repeat itself. I won't let the rabbit hole claim her too...I swear."

* * *

August 22nd 2022

Detective Second Class Alexis Castle stepped out of the newly refurbished elevator into the the Homicide squad room of the 12th Precinct for the first time in over a decade. She was no longer the fresh faced eager to please little girl she had been all those years ago when she had first come here to bail her father out of jail after her dad had stolen police files in the case that had first paired him with Kate Beckett. Detective Alexis Castle, NYPD was a completely different animal altogether.

After her kidnapping at the hands of Alexei Volkov, and her grandmother's unsolved murder had gone cold, she had grown a thicker skin and developed a harder edge to her features, one only her father could now penetrate, simply by pouting and calling her pumpkin. Only for him would she ever be the little girl she once was, though she was no longer certain now which was the real her and which was the facade she now showed the world.

She had transferred to NYU the very next semester after her grandmother's funeral, changed to a double major of Criminal Justice and Forensic Science and never looked back. She breezed through the prerequisites for the NYPD Academy within a year with her doubled up course load.

After the academy, she had managed to avoid working Vice (though with her slender body and fresh faced appearance many had thought she would be a natural fit there) and still managed to make Detective within two years to beat Detective Kate Beckett's record as the youngest female detective by a year and a half.

Unlike her stepmother, she wasn't saddled with the single minded obsession to find Martha Rodger's murderer. She knew that with the evidence available at the time, and with Kate Beckett in her corner that it had been investigated as well as it could be. The evidence simply wasn't there, in spite of both Lanie Parrish and Dr. Perlmutter's best efforts there just hadn't been enough to go on. Losing her Grams the way she had had nearly destroyed her family and galvanized her to take action and refocus her ambitions accordingly.

It had taken a nearly two years of therapy and the constant love and devotion of Kate Beckett to get her father functioning as a human being and as an author again. Though he switched genres from murder mystery to Action adventure after a chance meeting with Clive Cussler, (he and his NUMA crew had been diving on a WWII wreck site when He and Kate were on vacation in the Bahamas) which had turned his life around. Murder had forever lost its appeal for him, yet Nikki Heat and Jameson Rook managed to survive the change, simply reworked as federal agents chasing spies and terrorists as the members of an elite FBI task force.

Some things never change, his books were still love letters to his wife, at least allowing Nikki to have the dream job that Kate had given up to stay with him. An act of contrition and love that Kate recognized for act of love it was meant to be.

Kate had challenged her more than once about her choice to pursue a career in law enforcement. Made her examine it closely under the microscope of her own choices at her age. The way Alexis knew she secretly wished her father had done instead of turning to the bottle. Something she had also managed to keep her dad from doing, for which she would always be in Kate's debt.

Her first two years as a detective had been spent in the Major Case squad followed by a year undercover in the Irish mob in Boston on temporary loan to the FBI. She was shrewd, meticulous, and above all...driven. The FBI had offered her a job as a field agent in the Washington DC field office, but like her stepmother she knew her place was in the NYPD. She wanted homicide.

Unlike her stepmother, she cared more about how she got there. She was going there to speak for the dead, not to avenge her dead grandmother. She had made peace with that years ago. This was her mission in life now. Tragedy had taken the NYPD from her father, she was determined to see a Castle there again. She was exactly where she wanted to be.

As she rounded the corner to the familiar squad room, she saw that the desk Kate had once occupied for so long now had the nameplate "Det. Alexis Castle" on the side of it with one last surprise...her father sitting in the seat he had occupied when he had shadowed Kate all of those years. He rose from the chair at her approach.

"Daddy!" she whispered, shocked but overjoyed to see him here as she allowed herself to be pulled into his embrace. She knew he was risking a relapse of his anxiety disorder simply by being here.

"Hey pumpkin," he whispered back. "a little bird told me my baby bird would be back in the old digs and I just had to come and see."

Lt. Kevin Ryan gave the elder and younger Castles a moment before he tapped on the door to the Captain's office.

"Cap. She's here."

Captain Katherine Beckett stepped out of her office into the squad room to see Rick and his daughter catching up. Nobody had seen her since she left to work undercover in Boston. She had been kept sequestered until the trial was over and she was well aware her stepdaughter was wanted dead by the Irish mob in Boston. She had done too good a job getting evidence on the top leadership when she was undercover, having even found time to root out a mole in the Boston Field office.

When she had found out that Alexis' FBI case officer was none other than Will Sorenson, she put him on notice that if he didn't take proper care of her that she would beat him to within an inch of his life. Obviously he had taken her at her word.

She let the festivities go on for a few minutes before she did her duty, shut it down and assigned Alexis to a seasoned older homicide detective as her partner. Namely, Detective Ann Hastings, lead detective of the 12th Precinct's homicide squad. She tugged Rick back toward her office where she had his anxiety medication and a glass of water for him and admonished the squad to get back to work.

Being back in the precinct for even this long had taken enough of a toll on him and she needed to get him home before he spun out.

Alexis worked her her now, and if she didn't want her to be cited for a conflict of interest she had to show from day one that, in spite of her stepmother as her captain, she could and would pull her weight around here if she wanted to stay. The brass were watching her carefully, in spite of her exemplary record, especially Chief of D's Victoria Gates.

Kate knew something that nobody else did. Pound for pound no two cops in the the whole department, herself included, measured up to Alexis Castle in the ethics category. She had learned long ago never to underestimate "Little Castle."

The NYPD brass, however would have to be convinced the hard way.


	3. Setting The Stage

**Chapter Three  
****Setting the Stage**

Detective Alexis Castle knew the current state of affairs would only last for a short time, she only needed a little more time in rank and she would be making Detective First Class, and that Ann Hastings was on the short list to make Lieutenant soon. She would likely be relocating (possibly to Major Crimes since their lieutenant was thinking about retiring when she left) not long after that, as Lt. Ryan was not going anywhere. He and Uncle Javi had caught Grams' case when Kate had been barred from investigating it but they had failed to solve it as there was simply no evidence.

Guilt over not being able to give her family the closure they deserved had eaten Javi alive. He could no longer look Kate in the eye so he had accepted a promotion to squad leader and returned to ESU where he had subsequently made lieutenant and then eventually captain in his own right.

Nobody held his need to get away from the 12th, or his success against him. She knew she didn't, nobody could have predicted how completely the guy had disappeared, it was like the earth had simply opened and swallowed up her grandmother's killer. No one thought any less of him, it was only he who thought less of himself.

It was common knowledge at the precinct that Javier Esposito had been unable to let the Martha Rodgers case go. He couldn't accept that they could find closure for so many others in all of the years that her father had been here and they couldn't find that same closure for one of their own. If ESU hadn't wanted him back in the fold so badly he would likely have self destructed, crushed by the weight of his own guilt.

Since most of the case files were now digital in nature, Alexis had put an electronic marker on the case file. She would get a message if anything that fit the profile came up, or a match to the anomalous DNA sample was discovered. Barring that, she had to get on with the business of living. She knew deep down it was what her grandmother would have wanted for her, whatever she chose to do.

She would go home and check on her father later tonight. She knew that coming to the precinct had likely set off her dad's nervous disorder. She was touched that he would risk a full blown anxiety attack just to welcome her to the precinct she had worked so hard all of these years to become a part of. Though she was a little worried for him, he knew she loved him with all her heart, and she hadn't needed such a grand gesture on his part to prove it.

His gesture was sweet, but made her just a little bit sad too. Her dad had been scarred so deeply the night he had seen Gram's body at the crime scene that she was amazed he had recovered as well as he had. She had much to be thankful for, most especially Kate, who had given up a lot to stick by her wounded father's side. She would do everything she could to make sure the brass at 1PP never regretted allowing her to be here.

* * *

Her first official case had been a pop and drop, nothing terribly difficult, she had certainly seen more challenging cases in her time in Major Crimes. Though the less challenging case did give her a chance to prove to Kate and Lt. Ryan that she wasn't Rick Castle's wayward, skittish little girl anymore.

When she took down the murderer almost single handed and slapped the cuffs on she could see the approving looks from not only Hastings, but several of the other officers on the scene as well. She was sure she had _'made her bones'_ with the precinct. Her performance in the box, however had cinched it, she had the man cowed and filed his confession in under an hour. She noticed the change almost immediately after she walked out of interrogation room two.

Nobody called her _'Little Castle'_ anymore, from that day one she was, '_Castle'_

She had also found an admirer, a young crime scene analyst working working for Dr. Parrish at OCME named Jeremy Christian. They had gone out for coffee a couple of times during the case, she thought he was funny and really sweet.

There was something about him that was different from all of the other boys, and later men, she had dated in the past. He had an old soul and his eyes had a haunted quality she couldn't quite fathom. He reminded her a little of her dad, which is likely why she was so fascinated by him. She could tell he was attracted to her, too, had been since they met. She liked him.

She was ambitious and driven to be the best detective she could be, and had worked really hard over the years to prove herself to the NYPD and build her professional reputation, but she wasn't so much like her stepmother that she could do that at the expense of her personal life. She had reached the goal she had set for herself, and could afford to stop and smell the roses.

* * *

Later that Evening  
The Old Haunt

As was their usual practice at the end of the day, Kevin Ryan and Javier Esposito were having a beer at "The Old Haunt." They may not be working in the same precinct together anymore, but they were still partners where it counted. When Ryan had said _"till the wheels fall off"_ he had meant it, and so had Javi. Over the years, they always made time to spend together. Even in the dark times right after the Rodgers homicide investigation hit the skids and Captain Gates had assigned them other cases.

Most nights it was so Kevin could show off photos of his three children, or brag about the exploits of his oldest, but tonight it was Richard Castle's daughter he was crowing about. Javi puffed out with pride at the mention of her name or her accomplishments, though the reason for them still haunted him to this day. It was bittersweet that tragedy had once again given rise to another fine cop in the Kate Beckett mold.

"You should have seen her, Javi," Ryan gushed, (yes he was gushing) "_'little Castle'_ isn't quite so little anymore. She took down the suspect bold as brass and she's a natural in the box, man almost as good as Beckett was, if not better. She's like Beckett and her dad all rolled into one."

"I'd heard there was a new sheriff in town from the squad I had assigned to break down the door." Javi replied, "I told em to take special care of her, but I guess she really is on this"

He knew when he said it, and Kevin understood it too, that he would still give the same orders to any team he assigned to kick in a door for her. To him, nor matter how good she was, she would always be _'little Castle'_ Rick's baby girl, his pride and joy. He might not have been able to catch the bastard who killed his mother, but he would, _by God, _make sure Alexis Castle was properly looked after, if he had to put on body armor and lead the team himself.

He owed Richard Castle that much, if not more. So did Kevin.

"To Detective Alexis Castle." Kevin said, raising his glass.

Javi raised his own in salute before they downed their shots, "Amen, brother."

* * *

Upstate, NY  
The following day

Jerry Tyson had just come back from the physical therapist when he got the message from New York City letting him know that everything was going according to plan.

Though Richard Castle's fresh faced little girl changing gears from medicine to law enforcement had been something of a shock, it turned out to be a pleasant surprise, requiring only a minor adjustment to his plans. Now that he had learned that she was back in New York in his old stomping grounds, and as a detective in the 12th Precinct no less. All of the pawns in his new chess game were falling into place, though they were not entirely in the positions he had originally accounted for he could adapt. The last time he'd played this game had taught him the need for greater flexibility in his planning. A learning curve he had paid a steep price for.

Between the doctor's prognosis that he might get enough mobility to stand and walk on his own eventually and that his plans were beginning to reach fruition, he was extremely happy.

Happy enough to permit Caroline to take him out for one of her rare excursions out of her small, spartan room in the basement. If she behaved, he might even permit her access to the rest of the house for a time. She had long since learned that she and her son lived or died by his whims, but today he was feeling quite magnanimous.

He would give Alexis Castle time to become acclimated time to become comfortable in her job, and then the games would begin. He wanted to be back on his feet in time to fully enjoy the endgame.


	4. Comes the Blind Fury

**Chapter Four**  
**Comes the Blind Fury**

_There's a killer on the road.  
__His brain is squirmin' like a toad.  
__Take a long holiday,  
__Let your children play.  
__If ya give this man a ride,  
__Sweet memory will die.  
__Killer on the road_

"Riders On The Storm": The Doors

* * *

Mother's Day, 2023  
11:00 AM

The Castle Family walked together into Forest Hills Cemetery to pay their respects to both Rick and Kate's mothers. It had become a grim, maudlin family tradition ever since her father had emerged from therapy a changed man. Since that first year they had all learned their parts by rote.

It had taken on a somber new meaning five years ago, when Jim Beckett had died following complications from a liver transplant. (his five years of binge drinking after Johanna Beckett's murder finally having caught up with him) He had been buried next to his wife as was right and proper.

Sadly it was that occasion that had finally dragged Richard Castle out of his own head and allowed him to be the man Kate had married again, at least at home. It had become more bittersweet since the passing of Jackson Hunt from congestive heart failure shortly thereafter. He had been placed next to Martha, as the CIA could not officially claim him. Though CIA Special Projects Director Martin Danberg had appeared briefly at his calling hours to pay his respects...unofficially.

Since then, the remainder of the Castle/Rodgers/Beckett family marked this occasion in the only way they could. Flowers were placed on tombstones, tears were shed and hugs were exchanged. This was the one day of the year they permitted themselves to be overwhelmed by what they had lost. The other three hundred sixty-four days a year they did what the people buried here would have wanted for them. They carried on as best they could with the business of living, while Kate and Alexis spoke for the dead.

* * *

Six Weeks later

Ann Hastings' sendoff to be the new Lieutenant for Major Crimes was a major affair, held at "The Old Haunt" at Richard Castle's insistence. She had worked hard for nearly a decade to get where she was now. She had come a long way since the "Lone Vengeance" case so many years ago. Her fiance, Paul Whitaker had proposed only a few weeks before in this very bar, at Richard and Kate Castle's 10th wedding anniversary celebration. Rick had also insisted that when they got married that the reception be held there.

Captain Beckett and her husband had kept her secret about Lone Vengeance all those years ago, and had always been good to her. Better than she thought she deserved sometimes, but she couldn't possibly believe their overwhelming generosity to her sometimes. Kate Beckett had been her mentor from the very day she had first gotten her gold shield and she had mourned with all the rest of the 12th when Richard Castle's mother died. She had been one of the contingent of 12th Precinct officers and detectives who had walked the entire five miles on either side of the hearse that carried her to Forest Hills Cemetery, an unofficial honor guard for the mother of one of their own.

She had done her best to repay Rick and Kate's generosity by being as good a mentor and supervisor to Alexis as Kate had been to her. Secretly, she was in awe of the young woman's tenacity and level-headed attitude. She never forgot why she was doing this. Whom she served and whom she spoke for. This girl had non need to avenge her grandmother, no need for a costume to be a hero. She learned almost as much about being a cop from Alexis Castle, as she was able to give. She would make an incredible lead detective after she was gone.

The party had pretty much broken up by ten o'clock, most of the cops assembled had to be back in the precinct in the morning, especially Captain Beckett and Lieutenant Ryan. Alexis and her boyfriend, Jeremy had slipped out of the bar without so much as a "by your leave" as soon as the last toast had been made. She had no illusions what thy had in mind, as they had been making eyes at each other the entire night.

* * *

3:00 A.M.

Jeremy Christian lay in Alexis Castle's bed, his arms wrapped around her slender, athletic body as she slept in his arms. For the first time in his life he began to feel conflicted about his motivations, about the course set out before him. He knew it had been truly set years ago and that he really had little choice in the matter. The woman in his arms should mean less than nothing to him.

His stepfather had taught him harshly since he was little more than ten years old _never_ to be swayed by the pleasures of the opposite sex. Love was a weakness, a sickness to be purged, led to nothing but ruin. He had seen firsthand what that sickness had done to his mother, the acts of depravity she had committed for the sake of "love." He had watched her poison grandma and grandpa in their hospital beds because of it and he wanted nothing to do with it.

He knew that Alexis was falling in love with him, and saw that it was making her weak already. It would be her blind spot in what was to come, and he saw it for what it was. His opening to do what must be done. But if all that were true, why did he feel so conflicted? Why did watching her sleep, naked in his arms make him want to protect her from what was to come?

"_NO!" _came the angry, insistent, unwavering voice of his stepfather in the back of his mind, _"She is a pawn! Nothing more! A sacrificial lamb, to be led to the slaughter to make the man who did this to me pay! Love and trust are weaknesses to be purged!"_

The war in his head went on until the chirping of his cell phone interrupted his thoughts. He unwrapped himself carefully from Alexis without waking her and walked over to her dresser where it had been casually tossed next to hers in last night's frenzy of arms, legs, hands and tossed clothing on their way to her bed, to pick it up.

There was a single text message from an unlisted number, that when opened simply read:

_**Time to begin.**_

He left her a note to let her know he had to go home to get ready for his shift and was out the door. He had work to do.

* * *

9:00 AM

Alexis had gotten the call roughly half an hour ago.

Karen Eileen Matthews, Age 22 was found dead in her apartment lying as if prepared for death by her roommate Karen Jefferies and as Alexis was on call and the next on the rotation she had gotten the wake up call. The young woman was willowy, with long blonde hair and a neat ligature mark around her neck.

"What do we have, Lanie?" she said, and for a split second felt like she was a seventeen year old intern again, not the Lead Detective for the 12th Precinct.

"No...it can't be...he's dead. It can't be." was the only reply she got back.

The look of abject horror on Lanie's face when she looked up at her chilled Alexis' blood.

"It's him...he's back."

"Who, Lanie?" Alexis asked, she had never seen her one time mentor get so pale at a crime scene before, "Who is back?"

Lanie Parrish spoke only one word in response, but it was more like a hoarse whisper.

"Tyson."


	5. Returning to Square One

**Chapter Five**  
**Returning to Square One**

Captain Kate Beckett stood in front of the assembled officers and detectives of the 12th Precinct, Much as Captain Montgomery had done nearly fifteen years before laying out the the M.O. of Jerry Tyson, aka. 3XK or the Triple Killer. Thankfully able to be on top of this before the press got wind of it and that Rick tended not to watch the news anymore. She knew if he found out, he would be in here trying to help, only to do himself even greater emotional damage than before.

"For those of you who weren't around or may not remember that far back, the Triple Killer, or 3XK, otherwise known as Jerry Tyson got his nickname back in 2005 when he strangled three women in the same week, disappeared for precisely a month, then reappeared and killed three more."

She paused a moment to let this information sink in, flashing a glance at Alexis then continued,

"His known M.O. is to follow his victims, always blonde women generally between the ages nineteen and thirty eight, until he gets to know their routines, then disguises himself as a security guard or a maintenance worker to get access to their apartments, then strangles them with a green and red nylon rope."

"As some of you may recall he resurfaced briefly in 2010 using a go-between, his cellmate Marcus Gates, to commit three murders to get us to remove him from prison into a protective detail. With the help of Detective Castle's father we were able to positively identify him as Jerry Tyson, but not before Tyson overpowered him and then detective Ryan, took Ryan's badge and gun and disappeared."

Her eyes once again shot to Alexis, just in time to see her face go pale, and her shocked expression, noting that her father had obviously never shared that bit of information at the time.

"He resurfaced again in the fall of 2012, when he tried to frame Detective Castle's father for murder, then intended to have him murdered in general holding. After Rick and I discovered the evidence to exonerate him for the crime, he attacked the two of us on the East River bridge and took me hostage, forcing Rick to shoot him with my service weapon. He subsequently fell from the bridge deck and was believed to be dead"

Her eyes swept all of the faces in the room before she continued.

"Two final points, Jerry Tyson is back after disappearing for over a decade. Why? Everyone believed he was dead, he had gotten what he really wanted that night, why come back now when he was truly free? Only he can know for sure."

"A word of caution to all of you, he my not be a young man anymore, but he is most likely armed and definitely dangerous. He's carrying a police officer's badge and is most likely using it to further his crimes and commit his new murders"

She saw the expression of guilt cross Lt. Ryan's face as she said this and it weighed on her heavily, knowing that Ryan took it as a personal affront, as any cop would, that a criminal was using his badge to aid in his crimes. She shot him a look of sympathy before continuing.

"If, after all of this time, he is going back to his original M.O. and timetable, we are already well into day two and he has only gotten warmed up. We have pictures of him circulating among every precinct in New York City, but we're trying to keep this quiet to avoid panic and and a media frenzy. We know who he is, people, we know his habits, we need to get him before he can complete this part of his cycle or he will go back to ground for a month before going active. That's it, get out there and lets nail the bastard and put him in a cage where he belongs. Good hunting."

* * *

As the assembled cops broke up and moved to their assigned tasks, she retreated to her office. There was a time when she would have been out there in the trenches with them, but since making Captain, she knew she had to trust her people to do their jobs. Including Alexis Castle.

She really should have taken her off the case, but she needed her best people out there on this, and she had the benefit of not having ever worked the case and was working this with fresh eyes. She was a lot more level headed and methodical, especially in her data and evidence back checking than anybody she had available, if anybody could get a line on what Jerry Tyson's game was, it would be her.

Kate hated the idea of keeping secrets from Rick now, though. It had taken nearly a year of couples therapy to get her to realize that keeping secrets, not sharing her feelings and bottling things up had been one of the great stumbling blocks, not only in her relationship with Rick, but with nearly every other relationship she had ever been in, but she knew she needed to keep this from him.

She knew if he found out he would (his anxiety disorder notwithstanding) try to help, the Tyson case was personal for him, had been since she knew him. He was like a moth to the flame with that man it was personal. He would try to jump back in and go after him and it would unravel all of the progress he had made in the last decade.

He needed to sit this out, just like she knew she should have sat out the Lee Travis case so long ago. She and Alexis had made this decision together, knowing it was necessary for Rick's sanity.

They needed to get Tyson...and do it quickly. Once the media got hold of it, there would be hell to pay.

* * *

Two hours later, the call came in. The body of victim number two had dropped...

Her name was Melissa Chambers, age 22. She was found on her living room floor, done up in the proper funerary pose, with the neat ligature mark around her neck.

CSI Jeremy Christian, back at the OCME crime lab would be tasked with hair, fiber and trace and was put to the task of sorting out the DNA that belonged at the scene with what was anomalous. He had come highly recommended and was very good at his job, in spite of his young age. He had been recruited right out of Utica College's forensics program and had broken several cases since he started here the year before Alexis transferred in.

Alexis took charge of the evidence at the scene, signed the chain of custody paperwork and headed for the OCME building. A little face time with her boyfriend would not hurt at all, either. Lanie thought they made the cutest couple, so she cut the man a little slack when she would show up.

This case was big and the best were needed to step up. Alexis was determined to prove she was up to the task.

* * *

Upstate, New York

Jerry Tyson laughed as he listened to the audio file of Kate's speech from the listening devices planted in the 12th Precinct's homicide squad room. This far they were all dancing to his tune and he couldn't be more satisfied. He knew they would be chasing their tails looking for a ghost, while his proxy moved with near complete freedom...because they weren't looking for him.

His MO was nearly spot on, unlike that fool Gates' clumsy attempts had been, he had chosen his disciple well.

"Your confidence will be your undoing, Detective Beckett, by the time you figure out my true motives it will be far too late." he whispered to the photo of her on the smart board in the basement.

He would let Captain Beckett keep her little secret from her husband, for the time being. He would use it to his advantage when the time came, to sow as much chaos as he could when his goal was in sight. They would assume he was coming for the two of them. By the time they figured out who his true target was, it would be far too late.

Alexis Castle would be dead. He would video tape her slow torturous demise, so they could watch her beg for her life before he snuffed her out. He would destroy Richard Castle by destroying the one thing he held dear. He would have his revenge by destroying their little world.

Then he would finally be free. He would disappear never to be seen again, leaving the NYPD chasing smoke.


	6. Crossroads

**Chapter Six**  
**Crossroads**

Detective first Class Alexis Castle spent the early hours of her first day as Lead Detective for 12th Precinct's Homicide squad in the pistol range. She had remembered hating guns for most of her life, hating the look of them, the feel of them, and even the loud noise they made when fired. Now she found firing her police issue Glock 19, and its weight on her hip to be a comforting part of her every day. Being the daughter of a world famous, best selling author, she appreciated the irony.

She knew her father had kept one in the safe in his office and had taken it to a private range early nearly every morning for years, long before he had ever met or heard of Detective Kate Beckett. For all she knew, he still did. He had looked at everything else he researched with a near childish glee, except for the matte black Sig Sauer P226 locked in the safe along with the four magazines of .40 caliber ammunition for it.

One of which was loaded with armor piercing black talons (ironically called "cop killers") which he had gotten from a man Alexis only knew as "Agent Gray" shortly after what she now knew was his last run in with Tyson. His gun safe had been so well concealed, that even the highly trained CSU forensics team that processed the house when he was suspected of murder never found it.

He never laughed or joked or kidded around when he took that gun out the safe to clean it, or to take it to the range in the case it came in. He always wanted her to know that guns were serious business and not to be taken lightly. He had shown it to her only once when she was twelve. Told her if she saw it out of the safe she was not to ever touch it but was to come and get him.

Shortly after they returned from her kidnapping in Paris, he dragged her to the gun range he favored and between himself and the range master worked with her until her groupings were nearly as tight as his in the 10 ring with at least three different 9mm pistols. (One of which was a Russian made Tokarev) She had remembered crying and hating every minute of it at the time. One of the few times in her life he had ever ignored her tears and made her do something she didn't want to do.

To this day. nobody but her, not even Kate, knew the high caliber pistol had been there for the whole five years he shadowed her at the precinct, that he had a concealed carry permit for it in New York State, New Jersey and California, along with a P.I. license he'd gotten on a whim when he was first researching Derek Storm. Or that he had carried it during the sniper case the fall after she came back from her shooting. Kate had never seemed to question how or why her dad could drill the ten ring at fifty yards even with her Glock 19, a pistol he was, at the time, unfamiliar with. Not to mention dropping a moving drone from the sky with her Glock 26.

As far as she knew it was still there.

Alexis' tight groupings in the ten ring (making almost a single hole) would have done her father proud. She had gotten her training cycle's top scores in marksmanship when she was at the academy (some of which still stand in the Academy record books) and been the NYPD pistol competition champion for three years running both as a uniform and with the Major Case Squad. She wasn't down here to show off, though, she was here to blow off steam.

The body of victim number three had dropped that morning, Angela Moriarty age 20, nursing student, was found in her own bed behind the locked doors of the Lower Manhattan apartment she shared with her roommate Jennifer Stewart who had found the body. She had been in charge of the scene, but had been frustrated to learn that they were still no closer to finding Jerry Tyson than they were after victims one and two. If he kept his original pattern he would go to ground for a month and nobody knew where he would resurface, or whom his next target might be.

There was no forensic evidence of him at the scene, no video footage (the building had fully functional surveillance cameras both in the elevator and in the stairwells but there was nothing on them. It felt to her like they were chasing smoke. Tyson moved and killed with near impunity, like he was a goddamn ghost. She now knew exactly what her stepmother had felt every time she got close to finding her mother's killer only to be stonewalled again and again.

Nobody saw him, nobody heard him, nobody noticed him, but Tyson's handiwork was undeniable. He was just as invisible as he had been back when he tried to frame her father. He had been in their home, planting evidence, tampering with her dad's laptop framing him so completely that everyone but herself, Grams (God rest her soul) and Kate had still believed he was innocent leaving no one the wiser until it was nearly too late.

The bastard had watched her dad and Kate make love from inside the loft and had been in her room watching her sleep when she had been home from school. The thought still made her shiver. She had made her landlord change the locks in her apartment, secured all of the windows (including the fire escape) and add an extra set of deadbolts to her door along with a security bar.

Unbeknownst to the landlord, she had had the door and door frame replaced shortly thereafter with security steel and the the lock cylinders to the deadbolts changed by one of her father's "guys." Only she, Jeremy and her father had keys. When she had asked him to find her a good locksmith, she had told her dad that _"a girl can't be too careful"_ and he had been eager to swallow the lie from her.

A deception she still felt incredibly guilty about, in spite of the fact that she agreed with Kate about the need for dad not to be involved in the Jerry Tyson manhunt. Lying to her father still felt like a betrayal. Just like it had been when she lied about jumping the turnstile on the subway. She hoped when the two of them came clean after this was all over and the dust settled, he would be able to forgive them both. She knew Kate felt the same.

She knew she couldn't stay down here forever, she was expecting her new partner today and she would make a pretty poor example if she was late.

* * *

When Captain Kate Beckett saw Detective second Rose Freeman's service jacket cross her desk she had recognized the name right away. The Freeman case had struck a nerve with her because he had witnessed his mother's murder which had come out in his artwork. Matthew "Crow" Freeman's need to find out what happened to his mother had tugged at her soul as soon as she learned of it.

His sister's devastation at the loss of the older brother she idolized, along with the knowledge that her own mother had murdered him to cover up his mother's murder had effected her deeply as well. She was so moved by Rosie's pain that she'd had nightmares about her own mother every night for nearly a week after the case wrapped.

She figured that Castle would be both delighted and sad that he had guessed right in their discussion about Rosie. Obviously when she had picked up the pieces of her shattered life, she had decided to become a cop after all and from her service record she was a damned good one.

Most notably, while serving in Vice, Rosie had volunteered to go undercover in the vampire subculture to catch a serial killer preying upon them. She had even cited that she had gone to Morlock for background, on the subculture. (it would seem he could be quite lucid when he was on his meds) She had honored her late elder brother's memory by calling herself "Crow," as in his name, she protected the people he had come to identify with before his death, from the predator in their midst. Kate nearly wept, holding the tears back by force of will alone, at the melancholy poetry of it. She knew her husband would be equally moved when she told him tonight.

Though she would probably leave out the part about Morlock. After all of these years, he still hasn't gotten over the fact that he had bitten him. To this day, he is still a baby about it, even though she had bought him dinner _and_ bitten him herself more than once over the years. In fact she might do it again before the night was out...just for old time's sake. The thought of which brought a smile on her face as she put the file away.

"Send her in, Johnson, and let Detective Castle know I want to see her as soon as she's done at the shooting range." Kate said to the young patrol officer at her door as she stood up to greet a young woman she hadn't laid eyes on since the trial that had sent her mother to prison for two counts of first degree murder.

She fleetingly thought to herself that the only good thing about Tyson going to ground for the next month was that Rosie could make her bones as a homicide detective on something a little less daunting her first time out on the streets. She knew Alexis would take good care of her.

* * *

Meanwhile in Upstate, NY

Jerry Tyson sat back in his wheelchair. He was making definite progress getting his legs back. The visiting trauma surgeon...a doctor named Joshua Davidson if he recalled correctly...had been able to remove the bullet from his spine several months ago and his ability to use his legs had improved since then. He was told that although he would likely not be restored to full function, he would be able to walk for increasing lengths of time, though likely never more than a few hours at a time at best. Ironic that the man who had once been in love with Kate Beckett, who had saved her life from a sniper's bullet, would unknowingly be instrumental in helping him destroy her life.

His disciple had completed this portion of his assigned task with ruthless efficiency. He would spend the next month scoping out the next three victims and slowly gaining his primary target's trust. When the time came he would have his revenge. A few scant hours on his feet would be all he'd need.

He had promised Jeremy Christian a long time ago that he could have his mother back, that he would set her free if he performed this task and he was a man of his word. She would be the one to end his life when the plan was completed. Poor Jeremy would never know what hit him until she slipped the rope around his neck and killed him with her own hands. What happened to her after that was of no consequence to him. She would have served her purpose and he would have no further use for her.

He would be long gone, free to decide his own fate at a time of his choosing. Richard Castle, however, will never again be able to speak his daughter's name for the rest of his miserable life without seeing his face.

His revenge would be complete.


	7. The Wait Begins

**Chapter Seven  
****The Wait Begins**

Alexis Castle stepped off the elevator into the precinct feeling a little calmer than when she left two hours ago. She had needed that trip to the pistol range to clear her head.

_'Was this what it was like for dad when Tyson slipped away the first time? Knowing he's out there, knowing he's going to kill again and there's not a goddamn thing I can do about it?' _Alexis thought to herself, feeling the frustration of knowing Tyson was, despite their best efforts, still on the loose, free to continue killing anytime he felt like it.

Alexis had never been one for cursing when she was younger, she had used the occasional swear word for effect, but her father had raised her better than to be needlessly profane. Being undercover with the Irish mob, however, had required her to take on a whole new vocabulary, consisting primarily of a variety of Irish curses.

The majority of which which she had been quietly using on and off for most of the morning. (most of the week if she was being truly honest with herself) Curse words and coarse language her father never would have wanted to know she knew. (learning Gaelic had simply been a bonus)

She had had to become a much more dangerous creature in those days and the years since. Something else she knew her father liked much less.

For the first time in years, she had taken to carrying the high caliber handgun that had once been her constant companion back then. The .40 caliber Sig Sauer in her purse looked big in her hands, but she was deadly with it. It had kept her safe the two years years she had been undercover, though she had only ever has to fire it in anger once. The night the Irish mob had found the safe house where she had been sequestered during the trial. A night she had put everyone she knew who knew of it on notice _never _to speak of in the presence of her dad...including Kate.

Her protective detail had mysteriously disappeared that night, along with her NYPD issue Glock 17 from the drawer next to her bed. The two men assigned to "protect" her hadn't thought to check under her pillow though, nor had they been briefed about her choice of backup piece.

The two thugs from the Irish mob had thought they would be taking down an unarmed woman in her sleep and behaved accordingly, walking in loud, cocky and bold as brass like they owned the place, bragging about what they were going to do to such a _hot piece of ass_ before they killed her.

They thought wrong.

She had fired only two rounds that night, drilling the two Irish Mob gunmen right between the eyes. When her "protective detail" came back to clean up the mess (openly carrying her Glock still in its holster) they were startled to find her standing over the bodies of the two dead would-be assassins who had paid them off. She'd had an angry, deadly look in her eyes and her weapon pointed directly at them. They surrendered without a fight, ending their less than stellar careers in federal law enforcement.

_Special Agent Sorenson_ had gone ballistic when he found out. It wasn't until much later that Lt. Ryan told her Kate had put him on notice that she held him personally responsible for her safety. She would have found it comical, had she not killed two men that night. When the trial was over and the verdicts handed down, she swore from that day on to never trust the FBI, or any federal agency to truly have her back. She would work with them if she had to, but would never again volunteer to go undercover for them.

She preferred being here at the 12th, she knew the cops here could be trusted. Since Senator William Bracken's fall from grace over a decade ago and the investigation into the Ghost Crew scandal shortly after her grandmother was killed, Kate and Lt. Ryan, not to mention Victoria Gates before them, had done a hell of a job rooting out most of the dirty ones. She felt safer here than anywhere else she could think of.

She barely made it to the comparative safe haven of her desk when she saw the bankers box and a duffel bag for the locker room on top of the desk that had once been occupied by her predecessor, Ann Hastings. Obviously her new partner had arrived, and by Lt. Ryan's bemused expression next to her office door, she had obviously been keeping the Captain waiting...for how long, she didn't know.

"Shit." she whispered, followed by a few course words in Gaelic under her breath as the blush began to rise up her pale skin at Ryan's mischievous grin, knowing the Irish cop (who had spent time undercover in the Westies himself) had caught nearly everything she'd just said.

"Captain's waiting for you, _Castle_," He stated with a slight grin, "you might want to keep that Irish potty mouth of yours in check though...what would you _father_ think?"

As she breezed past him, showing none of the embarrassment she felt, she retaliated in a near perfect Irish brogue, "And you get such a silver tongue with the ladies by kissin' the stone, do ya? What would your Jenny say?" His smug self satisfied grin was wiped clean off his face at the mention of his wife, replaced by an embarrassed open mouthed pout.

Alexis smiled wickedly when the blush rose up his neck and past his cheeks as she sailed right past him putting some extra swing in her hips as she walked by. _'game, set, and match, score one for the redhead from So Ho,' _she thought to herself, _'God he's so easy' _ before tapping on Captain Beckett's door.

* * *

The gentle rapping on her office door caught Kate's attention, causing her to look up, noting who it was on the other side of the glass.

"Enter." Kate said loudly causing the door to swing open before motioning to Det. Freeman with her right hand.

"Detective Rosie Freeman, meet your new partner, Lead Detective Alexis Castle."

Rosie perked up at the name, turning to see Alexis coming in the door with her right hand outstretched to shake hers. She rose from her chair across from the captain's desk and crossed the small distance to take the offered hand.

"Glad to meet you, Castle, I remember your father quite fondly."

Alexis cringed internally for a moment, she hadn't had this dilemma for a very long time. "Read my dad's books, have you?" she said crisply, momentarily misreading the situation.

"No!" Rosie said a little too quickly, realizing she'd struck a nerve, and tried to cover her mistake, "I mean...yes...I've read your father's books...and I like them a lot...but that wasn't what I meant...Oh God I'm making a mess of this!" she began blushing scarlet causing Alexis' eyes and posture to soften as the realization dawned that she wasn't dealing with an overzealous hardcore Richard Castle groupie. (like the woman sitting behind the Captain's desk)

"Alexis, what she was trying to tell you was that she was involved in one of the cases your father and I worked on back in the first year he was shadowing me. Around Halloween 2009, the vampire case?" Kate supplied.

The case itself didn't ring a bell with her as she had been preoccupied at the time, but Feggin, a terribly drunk Paige, her father riding to the rescue at a senior party and Paige's angry reprisal for her dad ratting her out to her parents came clearly to mind causing her demeanor to soften even further, before her control once again emerged dominant.

"Captain, unless there's anything further?" Alexis asked.

Kate saw the entire exchange drift across Alexis' face all in the passage of a few seconds, understanding the moment for what it was and paused while she came back to the present.

"No, Detective Castle, you're both dismissed." Kate replied, her eyes drifting back down to the dreaded ComStat reports that were the bane of her existence now.

"Come on, Freeman, I noticed you found your new desk, let's go get you squared away." Alexis stated warmly, leading her out of the office and back into less uncomfortable territory. The feeling out process of a new partner beginning for them both.

Until, of course, a mortifying, saccharine, but all to familiar voice could be heard coming from the elevator.

"No I am _not_ going to wait downstairs! Do you have _any_ idea who pays your salary? My _taxes_ do!"

Alexis stopped dead in her tracks, closed her eyes and counted to ten in her head. First in English, then Spanish, then French and German, too for good measure before she turned around, a fake smile, fooling nobody but her mother plastered on her face.

"Hello, mom...what brings _you_ into town?"

From behind her she could hear Kate's head hit her desk...twice.

* * *

_*Author's note: I thought this story could use a bit of levity as things seemed to very angsty and dark up to this point. Meredith seems to be just the ticket. For anyone who has been reading my stories all this time, be n the lookout for an old friend or two to make a fresh appearance in the next few chapters.*_


	8. Less-Than-Welcome Visitor

**Chapter Eight  
****Less-Than-Welcome Visitor**

"_No I am not going to wait downstairs! Do you have any idea who pays your salary? My taxes do!"_

_Alexis stopped dead in her tracks, closed her eyes and counted to ten in her head. First in English, then Spanish, then French and German, too for good measure before she turned around, a fake smile, fooling nobody but her mother plastered on her face._

"_Hello, mom...what brings you into town?"_

_From behind her she could hear Kate's head hit her desk...twice._

* * *

Alexis did her best not to roll her eyes at her mother, but she never had made it easy given their history.

Her first trip to Paris had been when she was four, and had been only a little less unpleasant than her last visit over a decade ago. (courtesy of Gregory Volkov) She had fallen asleep in the limo after her mom had picked her up at preschool and remembered crying when she woke up halfway into flight to Paris, which had pretty much taken all of the fun out of the trip for mom.

She had called home as soon as they got to the hotel, not realizing he had no idea where they had gone. (mom had insisted that she okayed it with dad when they left) He had sounded worried over the phone, even more so when she started crying and told him she didn't know where they were and why everybody was so snooty and had such strange accents.

When she had handed the phone to mom she heard dad's loud voice, the angry sounding one that she didn't like, the one he never used with her and she generally only heard when Paula wanted to send him on a book tour out of town and forgot that she had a recital, or that she existed at all. Mom gave no indication that he had been yelling at her when she hung up the phone, wiped her face with a moist towelette from her purse and half dragged her to dinner. (it had been long past lunchtime by then)

When mom finally brought her home a day and a half later she jumped happily into her father's arms, overjoyed to be home again, back her her bouncy happy self the instant she saw him. (she had been a crying, unhappy bore according to "mommy" but she had neglected to include Monkey Bunkey in the overnight bag she brought, she just didn't get it like dad did)

Dad hugged her and covered her face with kisses with a look on his face that she now knew to be relief that she was alive, like he'd feared he'd never see her again. (she had seen almost the exact same look on his face from the other side of that cage and again inside the American Consulate on her more recent visit)

She distinctly remembered Paula and dad's lawyer accompanying him when he took her to preschool the following day in the town car. They were using big words like _"non-custodial parent"_, _"custodial interference"_ and _"liability."_ She hadn't known what those words meant at the time, but she did know one thing. That was the last time her mother had taken her _anywhere_ unsupervised until she was in her late teens. It was probably why she'd had to bluff and lie about a dead grandfather to get her out of school back then.

She had taught herself to put on a "dog and pony show" for mom whenever she visited since then so _"mommy wouldn't get bored and take her away from daddy"_ again. Like she had insisted she had done to mollify her every time she started crying that night at dinner in Paris.

Alexis forced her memory back to the present before walking up to her mother, kissing both of her cheeks, even now putting on the show for her mother, though the possibility of her taking her anywhere against her will these days was frighteningly small, some habits die hard.

"Why are you here, mom?" She finally asked, "You know I'm working here, right? This isn't like school where you can waltz in and claim a grandparent is dead so you can drag me off to play hooky with you?"

"Alexis, I wanted to go and visit your father, it was supposed to be a surprise." Meredith whined

Alexis cringed at that, recalling her last _surprise visit _about two years after Grams died.

"But that big Russian cretin that works the door now wouldn't let me go up to the loft," she whined some more, adding a really bad "puppy dog pout" to her features, "he said I wasn't on _the list_ and had his pet harpy of an assistant walk me out!"

It had taken Alexis Castle nearly a year after Sergei Emmetovich Ivanov took over security of the building for her to get used to him. It had been only a few weeks after her return from Costa Rica and Russian men still gave her the creeps. Only after meeting his wife Sasha and his daughter Ekaterina, (who was only a few years older than her) at the annual Christmas Party did she see him as a person, a warm family man, a beloved husband and father, not a manifestation of the men who'd kidnapped her and kept her in a cage did the ice melt and for her to warm to him.

She appreciated him even more now.

Alexis could tell her mother was extremely put out, in spite of her charming placating facade, one that most people, especially men fell for every time. If there was one thing Meredith Chase could not stand was not being on _the preferred list_...for anything. Especially when it came to her father, she didn't really want him, but she couldn't _stand_ the thought that _he_ no longer wanted _her. _Even to the point of letting him use her for sex. (something she _really, deeply_ wished she didn't know about)

"Of course you aren't on the approved list to go up the the loft without an invitation anymore, do you remember what happened the _last_ time you showed up unannounced?" Alexis replied, the fake smile now gone from her face. _'Of course'_ she thought to herself, _'she didn't come just to see me, she wanted to finagle an invitation to go up to the loft...it figures...she wants something from dad.' _

"Oh come on, sweetie...I'm sure they've forgotten all about that." Came her mother's sickly sweet reply.

"Mom," Alexis replied almost indignantly, losing patience with her mother by the minute, "dad had only been out out of the rehab facility for a week!"

She hated the cold sterile place her father's therapist had sent him to after his breakdown the last time he had tried to come to the precinct and the downward spiral of the panic attack that followed.

Alexis had found him sitting on the floor in the corner in his study with the Sig Sauer in his lap, (the very weapon she carries in her purse to this day) and a cut on his arm. He had been on a suicide watch the first six weeks he was there so there could be nothing he might hurt himself with even though he was strapped to the bed.

She had only visited the place once after that and she never wanted to picture him there again, how Kate could have withstood being there every day for a year she would never know.

That her mother had been so completely self absorbed and insensitive to both of them so soon after he was out of there never failed to make her angry. Dad had had to take his medication and Kate fled to the bathroom to cry alone after angrily kicking her mom out. She had _personally _removed her mother from the approved guest list herself that very night.

"Oh come on, darling...it wasn't that bad..." she started again.

"You tried to seduce him, mom!" Alexis shot back, trying hard to keep her composure.

"Alexis...sweetheart it wouldn't be the first time..." but Alexis cut her off again.

"You did it right in front of Kate...on their _third_ anniversary!" she pat at her mother, before turning her back to the woman who gave birth to her to gather up her self control.

Alexis heard the distinct sound of Kate' head hitting her desk twice more back in her office.

"Mother if you're serious about spending time with me, here's the address for my place, I don't have a guest room that's up to your standards so you will have to get a hotel, I won't be home till at least eight o'clock."

As terrible a mother as she may have been, to this day dad would still not approve of the violence she was contemplating in her heart at the moment. From the depth of her psyche, she summoned the colder persona that had carried her through two years undercover in Boston as she wrote her address on the back of one of her business cards. After seeing her mother to the elevator with a hug and another round of kisses on the cheek and the elevator doors slid closed she walked straight back to her desk and called the duty officer downstairs in the lobby.

"Officer Harrison, this is Detective Castle. if the woman who identified herself as my mother tries to bully her way back up to the homicide floor without mine or Captain Beckett's express invitation you are to take her into custody and place her holding, understood?"

When she go the affirmative response she was seeking to her order, she turned to her new partner without any sign that she had just given an order that might mean the imminent arrest of her own mother.

"Okay, Freeman, lets get your desk squared away and find you a locker, shall we?"

* * *

Jeremy Christian walked into ESU Headquarters intrigued about the personal request from their Captain, Javier Esposito. He knew that his technical skills were not the reason, nor did he in any way feel he was ESU material as he did his best to qualify with sidearm he carried, much less the heavier weapons used by the people under Esposito's command.

He didn't turn it down though, there were things he needed if he was going to survive once he was of no further use to his stepfather. He had no illusions that he would be considered anything more than a loose end, and this unit had some specialized gear, that with his technical expertise he could definitely adapt to serve his needs.

What he couldn't understand was why he suddenly felt like a schoolboy who had been called to the principal's office.

Captain Esposito stepped out of his office walked past him and said,

"Walk with me, son."

As he fell into step with the older man seemed to be uncomfortably giving him a tour of his command, though the reason for this excursion soon became abundantly clear as they walked the halls and entered the motor pool and the armory. Stopping near one of the mobile tactical units, the older man spoke without preamble.

"Alexis Castle is a good cop, likely one of the best I've seen since her stepmom was active. I've known her since she was fourteen years old. Her dad's a personal friend of mine, he's like a brother to me. He saved my life more than once. You make his girl happy, more happy than I've seen her since her grandmother died and her dad just...stopped...being himself, which broke her in ways I don't think even she understands yet. I just wanted you to know that if you need anything, don't hesitate to come to me, or Lanie or Lt. Ryan, ok?

When Jeremy nodded slowly, the solemn expression turned to ice and steel in half a heartbeat, so fast he hardly took note of it.

"But I swear, kid, by all that's holy, if you ever hurt her, I will make you bleed."


	9. Castle Guardian

**Chapter Nine  
****Castle Guardian**

Sergei Emmetovich Ivanov stood watch at the elevator door leading to the Castle loft like has every day for the past decade. He had just gotten off the phone with Alexis Castle who had called to remind him that Meredith Chase was still off of the approved guest list and was not to enter the loft without hers or Mrs. Castle's express approval, and to thank him for his diligence in this matter.

His professional pride and military training were on full display in the way he carried himself. He stood erect at just over six feet two and athletically built. Though he could read, write, and speak fluently in unaccented American and Queen's English, easily blending into the landscape in either country. he nearly always effected a heavy Muscovite accent common to his birthplace.

He remembered well, the circumstances of the evening that made this necessary. Ekaterina had had to practically drag Mrs. Castle off of the woman last time. He had called Ms. Chase a cab and admonished her not to come back, before his daughter could finish the job. He remembered what he whispered menacingly in her ear to this day.

"_You go, ne_kulʹturnyy_ malenkaya shlyukha (uncultured little whore) or I turn Ekaterina loose on you, don't come back, da?"_

* * *

Sergei was born on May 5th 1968 in Moscow and raised by his maternal grandfather, a twice decorated veteran of "The Great Patriotic War of 1941-45" Sergei was inducted into the Soviet Army and the Spetsnaz Alfa at the age of eighteen and saw action in the last two years in the Afghanistan conflict prior to the pullout in 1989. During this time he managed to distinguish himself and rose to some amount of prominence in the GRU serving under Gregory Volkov and his wife Lyudmila both of whom he detested because of the way they operated, but they had friends in high places in the Politburo , so he was forced to deal with them.

During his days in the GRU he often crossed swords with an American agent who worked under the name Jackson Hunt. Though they were enemies, they had developed a grudging respect for one another. When Lyudmila Volkov was killed in an operation at the hands of Hunt, though he publicly decried her death as a travesty of justice as a good Communist Party member was expected to, he privately sent Hunt a bottle of Stolichnaya to congratulate him for his service to the human race. Years later, due in no small part by information brought to light by Agent Hunt, Sergei personally saw to it that Volkov, who had been embezzling Soviet funds for years. Was left to rot in a Chechen prison for crimes against the state, shortly before the Soviet Union crumbled.

When Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia in 2000, it slowly became clear as he was passed over multiple times for promotion, and the escalating danger he was placed in without backup that something was seriously wrong. Certain elements of the Putin regime who had been loyal underlings to Gregory Volkov had been plotting against him, and it was it clear that he and his family were no longer safe. It was with a heavy heart that the loyal Russian officer, in late December of 2005 reached out to his old adversary, Jackson Hunt to help him get his family out of the country he had served honorably and well for his entire life.

In the early spring of 2006, he was told to pack a single bag each for himself, his wife Sasha, and his daughter Ekaterina (then 14) and get on the train for Berlin. They were personally met at the train station by Hunt, himself who provided them with forged papers to get them across the border into Germany where he saw to it they were not only granted asylum in the United States, but even helped him set up a private security company in New York. He didn't know at the time why the man had risked so much on an unsanctioned operation to help him and his family, other than he was an honorable man and a worthy adversary.

When she turned 18, his daughter, Ekaterina married a young man named David Allen Beauregard (a direct descendant of Confederate General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard) a Lance Corporal in The United States Marine Corps whom she had met when the family was vacationing in the Adirondacks. She gave birth to their daughter Nikita Irina Beauregard the following year shortly after he returned from his first deployment in Afghanistan. He had actually remembered bonding with the boy over their shared experiences of fighting in that country. Little did anyone know that the summer Nikita was born would be the last time they would see David alive, as he was killed by an IED on a road near Kandahar six weeks into his second deployment.

When his flag draped metal coffin was laid to rest with full military honors in Forest Hills Cemetery on a hot July Day in 2007, it was the only time since leaving the motherland that Sergei wore his Russian Army dress uniform with all of its ribbons in public, It was also the last time anyone ever saw Ekaterina Svetlana Ivonova Beauregard cry. Except for the love she had for her father and stepmother (her mother Irina had died giving birth to her) and Nikita, her eyes turned to ice and her heart to stone.

From that day forward Sergei took on the role of surrogate father to his granddaughter, encouraging her to take up music like her grandmother, inviting his son-in-law's family over, and taking the family to visit them in South Carolina every summer so that Nikita never lost touch with the heritage from her father's side of the family. David had died with honor, in the service of his country, and that was enough for an old soldier like Sergei. He had loved the boy deeply in his own way for the joy he had brought into Ekaterina's life and for that alone would see that he would always be remembered.

He settled down into the life of guarding rock stars authors and actors who thought it was "cool" to be guarded by a former Spetsnaz paratrooper with a thick Russian accent and eyes that could say "don't fuck with me" even to a blind man. He had even managed to get his small company put on retainer with Black Pawn Publishing to provide security at most of their high profile local events.

Most notably, he had been working the front door at the launch party for Richard Castle's Storm Fall in 2009. A standard public appearance protection detail, up until a tall, statuesque female NYPD Homicide Detective crashed the party and took the guest of honor in for questioning in a murder investigation. He had personally driven Richard Castle's daughter, Alexis home that night and his services as a limo driver had been called upon again to pick him up at the 12th Precinct when he had been arrested and then released a few days later.

In the spring of 2013, he had received a phone call from Jackson Hunt and within an hour had canceled all of his protection details for the next week. Hunt's granddaughter (whom he heard nothing about until that day) had been kidnapped and he had been told to get his family someplace safe.

An attempt had been made to snatch Ekaterina and Nikita while they were out shopping for a dress for her violin recital, but they hadn't counted on the extent of his daughter's martial arts training. She had taken the two thugs who came for her and Nikita apart without pity or mercy like the angry, feral Russian mother bear she was. Their broken, mangled corpses were never found. He put his family on a red-eye flight to South Carolina that very night.

Shortly thereafter, he and Hunt hit the farmhouse where Alexis and the other girl had been taken only to find them already gone, leaving only their coats behind. He did his best not to ignore the screams that came from the room where his old friend was conducting the aggressive interrogation on one of the men who had taken her. When he came out after disposing of him with a single gunshot to the head he had a single name. Gregory Volkov.

He would have gone with Hunt to Paris, but his old friend told him to take care of his own. He felt a moment of great satisfaction when some of his old contacts in Interpol told him that Volkov was dead, defeated by his old friend and his son.

He had removed himself from the day to day operation of his security company after that, placing active details in the hands of a man he trusted, one of David's friends who had resigned from active duty and his private security firm quietly absorbed the company that oversaw security of the building where Richard Castle and his family lived.

He replaced most of the personnel who had been so utterly inept at their jobs with men he knew were skilled operators, especially the ones who had permitted Jerry Tyson to breach the building's security the previous fall. The full sweep of the building he had personally conducted had located no fewer than twelve active listening devices throughout the loft and two video cameras with full audio, one in his office and the other in his bedroom.

He kept Eduardo on after a very thorough and exhaustive background check. The family liked him, and he seemed personally committed to his job, (the fact that the former NYPD officer and ESU operator helped break him out of jail when Tyson framed him for murder also impressed him and was a contributing factor) but fired just about everyone else. He set about turning the building into a fortress and the men and women guarding it into a cohesive unit to be reckoned with.

His new client, Richard Castle still believed Tyson to be alive, if so, he would be meeting an altogether different reception if he _ever_ came back. Sergei would see to it personally, with his bare hands if necessary.

It took most of that first year to earn Alexis Castle's trust. After her experience in Paris with his former boss, he didn't blame her for her uneasiness. She avoided him when she came to the loft to visit her father, even though he made it a point not to speak Russian in her presence and use the unaccented English and American dialect he had perfected decades ago to ease her misgivings about him.

Those misgivings seemed to melt away, however as soon as she met his second wife, Sasha, Ekaterina and his granddaughter, Nikita at the family Christmas party that winter. Like everyone else who met his little luch solnista (ray of sunshine) she fell in love with her immediately, even offered to tutor her in the violin for a time. She and Ekaterina became fast friends as a result, one of the rare times after David died that he saw his malen'kaya koshka (little cat) truly happy.

The night Martha Rodgers had been killed in an alley outside of the off Broadway theater where her students had been performing had been, to him, his greatest failure. He had taken the night off to attend one of Nikita's recitals and had placed her security in the hands of a new hire who had fallen down on the job. He hadn't even been with her in the alley, where she had gone to get some air, to identify her assailant. The man had been lucky to walk away with his life when Sergei found out and he cut him a check for his hours and fired him on the spot.

For the entire year that Richard Castle was in the occupational therapy wing of the rehab clinic either himself or one of his best men drove his wife to see him. He personally vetted _everyone _on the floor where he was and _anyone_ who was admitted into his room. Ekaterina personally took charge of Alexis' safety while she was at college until she joined the police Academy. The extended Ivonov family had closed ranks around the Castles, and that was all there was to it.

The only time he was absent from his post was the day Jackson Hunt died. Rick was still in the rehab center, Kate was at his side and Alexis was taking her entrance exams for the academy. Hunt had admonished him to not tell them, so he sat at the bedside of his former enemy, now his best friend when his heart finally gave out so his heartbroken friend would not die alone. He swore from that day on, he would do everything in his power to protect what was left Richard Alexander Webb's family (even Martha and his son never knew his real name) until the day he died.

It was now a matter of honor.


	10. The Shape of Things

**Chapter Ten**  
**The Shape of Things**

Jeremy Christian's  
Studio Apartment Kitchen

Jeremy Christian sat in the kitchen of his small apartment, considering the acquisitions he had made from the ESU motor pool, namely two NYPD issue M84 stun grenades. They were small and easily concealable, but their "less than lethal" status simply would not do if he meant to use them to defend himself from his stepfather. That however was something he could easily rectify.

Jerry had known that he was an angry kid, knew that he had a issues with attachment and abandonment, and lacked a real focus for his anger, which he tended to vent it by destroying things. Abandoned buildings mostly.

The things he was doing now, however turned his stomach. He may have had his issues as a kid, but he hadn't been a murderer until Jerry Tyson had come along. What Jerry did not know, what he had been well used to keeping to himself, even by age ten, was his fascination with fire. Fire was a living breathing creature, it needed the same things that all living things needed to survive, it needed to eat and it needed to breathe.

After he had killed the woman that Jerry had sent him to kill (Jerry had called it it "his blooding") He had sent him to school for criminalistics and cyber security. He had elected himself to minor in chemistry (he always found little ways to defy him) and had learned more than Jerry had ever wanted him to know. Especially when it came to his weapon of choice...fire.

He disassembled the two stun grenades and replaced their magnesium charges with white phosphorus. He was a good shot, a better shot than his police test scores bore out, but he knew Jerry used body armor, he would be prepared. It was the main reason he survived his last encounter with Kate Beckett. Guns alone were not gonna cut it.

The "Willie Pete" incendiary grenades he had cobbled together however, would level the playing field, give him a fighting chance when the time to face Jerry came.

He had cataloged the effects of every victim in this sick game. Pulled the drawer on each one of them and looked at the faces of the women he had killed. He had no desire to recall or speak their names, knowing that he had wrapped the green and white rope around their necks himself and pulled tight until they had stopped twitching.

Knowing that he had snuffed out their lives for no other reason than his stepfather had commanded it, had prepared and groomed him for this since he was 10 years old. Growing up with the constant implied threat that he would do unspeakable things to his mother if he didn't comply, and had made him listen as he practiced some of them on her in the middle of the night.

Drilled his own sick methods into his head every day. Even strangled a young, blonde woman while he watched so he would know what to look for and making him help prepare the body to his specifications shortly before he left for his interview in New York City.

Jeremy knew he had only a brief reprieve before the time for him to kill came again. That when he was done killing the next three, he would be expected to deliver Alexis Castle into Jerry Tyson's waiting hands. He knew he had only that much time to find a way to stop him, to save her from the fate he had in store for her. Jerry had described it to him in very gruesome detail. She would be desecrated in every way possible, would actually make her beg for her own death before he finally slipped the rope around her neck.

This he simply could not allow to happen.

It was the one flaw in this plan that Jerry had not fully prepared for. Somewhere in the middle of seducing her and working his own charm on her so she would fall in love with him. (as he had done many a time in college only to dump them for no apparent reason after he got what Jerry told him was the only thing women were good for)

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, he had inexplicably fallen in love with Alexis Castle. He hadn't meant to...hadn't wanted to, hadn't thought he was even capable of it after years of living under the thumb of Jerry fucking Tyson. But somehow he had, and she was human to him, real to him. In a way her knew even the women he had killed hadn't been until now. Now that he had seen them through her eyes. Been made to feel remorse for what he had taken from them.

He had seen the love she had for her family with his own eyes, the lengths she was willing to go for them, the love she had gotten back from them in return. Seen how different it was from the picture Tyson had illustrated for him, saw the _strength _ Alexis gained from that connection.

He knew he should resent her for what she had for the better world she had been raised in, but she had shown him, without either of them realizing it, what family was _supposed_ to be, what love was supposed to be and he knew now, thanks to her, what love really was. He didn't deserve her, or her love, yet she loved him made him realize he realize that he was capable of loving another human being and from that moment on, he knew that could not let his stepfather have her.

He could not permit Jerry Tyson to taint the love he had found, the love that had set him free, with his filth like he had tainted him, like he had tainted his mother. He would do what had to be done to see to it that never happened. He would have to stop him.

Until then he would have to play this out according to Jerry Tyson's tormented design. It was the only way to draw him out of his mother's house to the city to claim his prize. It was the only way to save them both.

Jeremy knew in his heart that he was damned already, Jerry had seen to that. He had too much blood on his hands. The first person he had ever killed in that dirty alley had opened his eyes. He had tried to rebel the next morning, to question why, only to be beaten within an inch of his life...by his own mother...while Jerry watched. It was then that he knew that reason would not work, only direct action.

In his mind, his course was now irrevocably set, his fate sealed, his own life forfeit. He would prove Tyson wrong with his dying breath, show him that love was not a weakness, but a strength. That it had given him the strength to break free from Tyson's grip on his soul.

He knew in his heart that it was the only way. Though she would likely spend the rest of her life cursing the very mention of his name, she would be safe from him. Any other way and Jerry wouldn't come, he would slip into the shadows and disappear, likely taking his mother with him, never to be brought to task for all of the evil he had done.

His life didn't matter, nothing else mattered...she would be safe and his mother would finally be free. He would pay his own price for his own crimes...in hell. No matter what the cost, he would finish it.

Jerry Tyson must die.

* * *

3:00 AM  
The Castle Loft

___Castle looked on as Kate finished her eulogy, saw the look of warmth in her eyes as she got to the part of finding someone to to stand with you. He saw the reflected glint off in the distance, then saw her body jerk from the rifle's impact before he could reach her._

_"____Beckett's down!" he heard somebody yell out as he knelt over her in the grass where he'd tackled her._

_"____Kate...shh" He whispered at her._

_"____Kate.. please..please stay with me.." he pleaded as he cradled her head while she lay bleeding._

_"____Don't leave me." she was staring up at him, her facial expression a mixture of pain and shock_

_"____Please...stay with me, okay?"_

_"____Kate...I love you. I love you Kate..." as the light drained from here eyes, and she slowly bled to death on the grass..._

___...melting into another scene...this time a cage deep within a mansion in Paris, his daughter's broken body crumpled dead inside, Volkov laughing as he turned the gun that had just killed his daughter on him and pulling the trigger..._

Richard Castle shot bolt upright in bed screaming as the panic attack claimed him, waking Kate in the process.

She wrapped her arms around him and did her best to soothe him, helping him get his breathing under control, whispering calming nonsense words into his ear as she coiled her long legs around him, using her whole body to bring him back to the present, back from the nightmare scenarios that plague his dreams, back to her once more. Tears streaming down her own cheeks for her stricken husband as she did so. Until he was still enough that she could help him take the anti anxiety meds that would help him go back to sleep take him deep under where the nightmares could not claim him.

* * *

Office building  
Central Park West  
4:30 PM

It was supposed to have been a clean take down. They had the suspect. William Norquist dead to rights for murdering his ex wife to get out of paying alimony and to have access to his children's trust funds to save his own failing business. They were certain he was going to run as they put on their body armor. They had called ESU, but with a bank robbery on the other side of town, no units had been available in time to get him before she skipped town, and other backup was twenty minutes out.

He should have come quietly, but when Rosie Freeman kicked in the door, the man had calmly waited for Alexis and her partner to walk in and without preamble, opened fire with a sawed off lever action shotgun, hitting Alexis square in the center of her body armor. The blow-back slammed her head into the doorway and she crumpled as if boneless to the floor.

Rosie dropped to one knee and returned fire with her Glock 17 center-punching the man with three well placed hollow point rounds clean in the chest. Putting him down and ending the brief altercation. She kicked the gun out of his dead hands, holstered her sidearm and ran to her stricken partner's side.

Alexis was bleeding from a gash in her forehead, a large burn mark in the center of her vest. In the heat of the moment she couldn't be sure what type of round had hit her. She applied direct pressure to the gash in her partner's forehead and got on her radio to call it in.

"One Lincoln 36 one Lincoln 36 10-13 in progress...100 Central Park West shots fired Officer down, repeat officer down"

* * *

_*Author's Note* Yes dear readers, Jeremy Christian has been so twisted by Jerry from such a young age that he sees no other way to beat him other than to continue to commit the murders Jerry had set him to. The only way he can see to save Alexis and his mother from the clutches of 3XK. He is that far gone. He deserves no pity because in his own way he is just as bad as Jerry. His only redeeming qualities at this point are that he really does love Alexis and that he knows he deserves to be punished for his crimes. No punches will be pulled in showing that._

_Save your pity and feels for poor Alexis._

_(apologies for the cliffhanger)_


	11. Recovery

**Chapter Eleven  
Recovery**

_Rosie dropped to one knee and returned fire with her Glock 17, center-punching the man with three well placed hollow point rounds clean in the chest. Putting him down and ending the brief altercation. She kicked the gun out of his dead hands, holstered her sidearm and ran to her stricken partner's side._

_Alexis was bleeding from a gash in her forehead, a large burn mark in the center of her vest. In the heat of the moment she couldn't be sure what type of round had hit her. She applied direct pressure to the gash in her partner's forehead and got on her radio to call it in._

_"One Lincoln 36, one Lincoln 36, 10-13 in progress...100 Central Park West, shots fired, officer down, repeat, officer down"_

* * *

Everything was a blur for Detective Rosie Freeman after making the panicked "officer down" call to dispatch. She was doing everything she could to control the bleeding from Alexis' head wound, but her partner was still unconscious and unresponsive when the paramedics arrived, followed shortly by a distraught Captain Esposito who began barking orders as soon as he came on the scene.

He was on the phone in a heated discussion with the 12th Precinct's watch commander about what happened to the backup that Det. Castle had called in for, when the medics secured her for transport and strapped her into the gurney for the elevator ride to the ground floor.

"Go, Freeman...I'll see to your unit, " Captain Esposito said almost softly to her when she caught his eye, "IAB can pick up your gun and take your statement later, they're gonna have bigger fish to fry tonight."

Rosie didn't skip a beat as she fell into line with the EMT's who wheeled Alexis to the waiting elevator. When they passed the pair of uniforms who had been dispatched to back them up, flanking the elevator doors to hold them open, she glared at them icily, with barely concealed rage and contempt.

She had heard them joking with another sector car after their call for backup went out about "s_eeing how 'Nancy Drew' and 'Little Red Riding Hood' _ _handled a simple take-down without riding ESU's coattails."_ Judging by the looks on their faces they didn't find the situation quite so funny anymore.

_'They certainly won't have anything to laugh about for a _very_ long time when Captain Esposito is done with them.'_ Rosie thought spitefully to herself as she saw The ESU captain rounding on them before the elevator doors closed on her.

Like most cops she had little love or respect for Internal Affairs, but tonight she hoped they nailed those two sexist, miserable excuses for cops to the wall. They had broken the faith were about to find out that in the NYPD, at least in 12th precinct anyway, there was a price to be paid for that.

But for now she had an unpleasant duty to perform as she took out her cell phone and dialed Captain Beckett's number. The captain had gone home early that evening to take care of her husband, and she didn't know what frightened her more, taking on a shotgun-wielding murderer by herself, or having to call the Captain and tell her that her stepdaughter was down.

She felt sick.

* * *

Rosie held Alexis' hand for the entire ambulance ride to the hospital. The redhead had only been her partner for nearly a week, but they had already formed a bond that was nearly unbreakable. It hadn't even been a month since her last partner, Detective Bill Crockett had died under very similar circumstances. Only he hadn't been wearing his vest.

She remembered holding his hand just like this after they had been ambushed at a drug buy. He had bled out in the ambulance and it had torn her heart out, they had been partners for nearly a year, since she had first gotten her shield and graduated from dressing like a hooker.

When she heard a slot in the rotation had opened, she had jumped at the chance to transfer to the 12th, not just because Kate Beckett was a legend in the department, but because she simply could not bear to remain in the Two-five...there were simply too many ghosts.

"Come on, Alexis...fight," she whispered, squeezing her hand as the paramedics worked on her, "please don't leave me."

* * *

_Alexis Castle's mind wandered in a dreamlike state, following what she assumed was her younger self on a walk through her own life. Her early days with her father, when it was just the two of them, were some of the happiest days she could recall. _

_Even when she was sick or hurting or in pain, the one constant was her father. When she was sick, or she fell down, he was always there with gentle hand, a warm hug and an encouraging word. Not matter what he was always there by her side showing her the world with a sense of childlike wonder._

_As she moved later and later into her life, her grams had become an even larger part of it than she had been in the beginning ,her world expanded and the warmth was even greater, but farther along her adult self saw the coming darkness._

_She knew precisely when her world changed, when it had become darker. She had never known such deep fear as the week she spent in captivity, not knowing where she was, not knowing if dad would find her this time. Even after she found that she was in Paris, that fear was still there as present as the bars of the cage she was kept in. In spite of everything, though her father still came for her, took her by the hand and led her to safety. Her knight in shining armor. _

_Then a shadow cloaked in darkness arrived on the horizon, leaving her grams dead in an alley. When it disappeared, her father had been taken away, leaving only parts of him behind, a pale imitation of the father she once knew. _

_Who would pick her up now when she fell down? Who could fill the shoes of the man who had always looked out for her, her North Star, who had always stood by her now that he could barely take care of himself?_

_The pattern against whom all of the boys and men who had come and gone in her life were measured. Owen, Ashley, Max, and eventually even Pi had fallen short of that mold. Only Jeremy seemed to measure up. There was depth and substance in his foam green eyes that the others seemed to lack, a tender gentleness in his spirit that reminded her of her father. He was the first man whom she had __truly let in since her dad went into that sterile awful place and came back out a pale shadow of who he once was. _

_Of all the would-be suitors who had come and gone, he seemed most likely to be what she needed. She was in love with Jeremy Christian._

* * *

One by one, Alexis Castle's senses began to check in. First was her sense of smell, followed closely by hearing and touch, reporting the steady "beep, beep, beep" of the heart monitor and a tightness in her chest like a too-tight rubber band had been stretched around her ribs. The last thing she remembered was the flash and bark of the shotgun less than five feet in front of her.

She could feel a large hand holding hers, and when her eyes finally drifted open to the dimmed, but still too bright light of the hospital room, she found herself looking into the unmistakable baby blue eyes of her father. They were dulled by the drugs in his system her analytical mind told her he had to have taken to be in this room, but still, it was dad...here...holding her hand, the first person she saw when she woke.

"Hey pumpkin," he whispered, tears welling in his eyes, still puffy and bloodshot, "you had us all really worried for a while there."

"Daddy," she replied in a hoarse whisper, "how long was I out?"

"About twelve hours." Her father whispered, his voice just a hair's breadth from breaking.

Almost immediately, Alexis tried to sit up, but his other hand firmly but gently pressed her back into the pillow and she lacked the strength to fight him.

"Rosie!" she moaned, in a near panic, knowing her partner had been left to deal with their suspect alone, "Where's Rosie?"

"Shh, baby bird, it's okay, she's fine." her father whispered, "she got the bastard, and rode with you in the ambulance. She never left your side until Kate and I got here."

"Oh thank God." Alexis replied, as she began to settle back down, crisis averted, "Where is she?"

"Kate tried to send her home, when we got here, but she refused to leave until she knew you were all right. She finally convinced the poor girl to lie down on one of the couches in the waiting room, she'd been running herself ragged since she got here."

The sight of a beaten down Rose Freeman clearly took Rick back to the teenage girl he remembered so many years ago when he and Kate had worked her brother's murder case. The only time he had left his daughter's side during his long twelve hour vigil had been to look in on the young detective as she slept fitfully on the couch out in the waiting room, covering her with his own long trench coat as he reminded himself to thank Rosemary Freeman properly later for giving him back his little girl.

"Right now, though, she's giving her statement to IA, she should be back soon."

Before Alexis could comment further, Kate burst into the room, her blue NYPD issue windbreaker open with her Captain's badge and sidearm on full display.

There were tears welling in her eyes, that she refused to let fall as she looked upon father and daughter. The silence of the moment was finally broken when Alexis asked the one question she needed an answer to.

"Where's Jeremy?"

Rick looked over at Kate who finally responded,

"He was here most of the night, sitting right next to your father, I don't know if he spoke a single word the entire time he was here. He waited to know that you would be all right, before Captain Esposito came in here, clapped him on the shoulder and told him that he was needed at dispatch to make the case against the officers who had left the two of you hanging in the breeze. He kissed you once on the forehead and left with him."

Alexis closed her eyes and opened them again. Jeremy was doing what was needed to be done. He would see to it justice would be done.

Kate's phone rang and she stepped away from from them to answer it. The longer she spoke, the darker and more harsh her words became, until she could be heard to say,

"You have got to be kidding me, sir!" Kate hissed followed by silence as Chief Of D's was saying something on the other end. "The commissioner wants this swept under the rug? Those two men left two of my detectives flapping in the breeze, one of whom was nearly killed!"

Another long silence as she listened to the phone

"Yes, sir, I know a public spectacle would be bad for the department, and yes, I know it's an election year."

"I don't care what you, or the commissioner do, sir, but I want those two OUT of my precinct, and there WILL be a reprimand in their jacket for dereliction of duty."

"Fine."

They could both tell she was incredibly upset, her green flecked brown eyes smoldering with impotent rage. Alexis looked her in the eye, and whispered, "They're gonna walk, aren't they."

"Yeah. It would be _bad for the department _for it to get out that this kind of thing still happens in the NYPD in this day and age. They'll get transferred out, get an administrative slap on the wrist and that's it."

* * *

Four Days Later

Officers Richards and Davis never showed up for their first day after being transferred to a precinct in Staten Island. A search went out for the two men who were last seen boarding the ferry on foot and seemed to have vanished. The case went to missing persons as no signs of foul play seemed apparent, and no evidence of them, their badges or their sidearms was ever found.

Forty eight hours later, the charred, skeletal remains of two Caucasian men were found in the shell of a badly burned late model Crown Victoria in a wooded area just off of the Taconic Parkway. A DNA comparison and dental records turned up nothing that could identify them. The only clues found were traces of Cyclonite and gasoline in the passenger compartment and on the bodies, though it could not be traced back to a specific batch number or manufacturer.

Both cases would later go cold for lack of evidence and no connection between the two was ever made.

The following day, Jeremy Christian returned from a trip upstate to visit the graves of his dead grandparents, just in time to greet Alexis Castle with a huge bouquet of roses on her first day back at the precinct.

It would be decades before a metal box containing their badges, personal effects and service weapons were found during a dredging of the Barge Canal in Herkimer, NY.

The case would go unsolved for nearly fifty years.


	12. The Huntress Has Awakened

**Chapter Twelve  
****The Huntress Has Awakened**

Kate Beckett personally signed the transfer orders removing Officers Richards and Davis from the 12th. Unsurprisingly, word got around the precinct about what happened. They had refused to back up fellow officers, placing them at unnecessary risk, one of whom had been critically wounded and the other had been left to handle an armed homicidal assailant alone. The two men found that they had few friends left in the station house after that, and even those were unwilling to stand up for them.

They had broken the thin blue line, and even though the higher ups at One Police Plaza were unwilling to do anything for fear of bad press, everyone in the station house knew that if the two of them stuck around, _"the street would handle it."_ A precinct could be a very cold and lonely place when everyone has turned their back on you.

Their threat to go through their union reps rang hollow, and they both knew it. What had started out as a joke because two female detectives had called for backup to arrest a rich suit had nearly ended in tragedy making the two of them pariahs in the precinct. Nobody was laughing now, least of all them.

They collected their belongings from their lockers and accepted the transfer to Staten Island without further incident. When it was done, Kate took a rare three days of personal leave to take care of her family, leaving Lt. Ryan in charge of the precinct.

Now that Alexis had regained consciousness, the risk to her long term health was greatly reduced. She was aware and responsive to stimuli and lucid. Her prognosis for a full recovery and return to duty was very good. Once she was cleared both medically and by the department shrink she would be good to go. Though Kate never in a million years thought that she would be referring Alexis to the same therapist she had been seeing off and on since her shooting nearly a decade ago.

Kate, had not been sleeping well herself in the past few days, and she knew it. Between Rick's latest episode, and Alexis' shooting she had been running nearly full tilt on coffee and cat naps for far too long to be healthy. She needed to sleep and she needed to process everything now that Alexis was out of the woods and Rick was settling into the routine of looking after his headstrong daughter. She was a grown woman now, and chafed at being babied but she took it on the chin to ease her father's troubled mind, even agreeing to sleep in the guest room.

Rick had been right all of those years ago when he had confronted her in her apartment (where Alexis now called home after extensive renovations) after Lockwood's escape. She had crawled into her mother's case and never come out. She had lived with it hanging over her head for so long that she really hadn't known who she was without it. From the age of nineteen it had been one of only two constants in her life. The other were Richard Castle's books. Now she had a new obsession

* * *

When the case that had driven her entire life since January 9th 1999 had been blown wide open by the FBI nearly a decade ago, and the guilty verdicts against Senator William Bracken for all eight of the murders he had been responsible for had been handed down, it had been like her rudder had been taken with them and she had been cast adrift in the maelstrom. Her saving grace had once again been Rick.

The two years before Martha had been murdered had been the most blissful and carefree in her entire life. She said yes to his marriage proposal and she had given her whole heart to Rick. She had finally stopped putting her foot out and let him all the way in, in a way she had never felt safe enough to do before.

When they had found Martha stabbed to death in that alley, it was like her own mother's death happening all over again. A sick twisted replay of of history. She watched helplessly as he tried valiantly to cope with the staggering loss of the only parent he had ever truly known, only to sink further and further into the dark, bottomless pit of the anxiety disorder as it ruthlessly claimed him.

Taking half of her heart with him into the abyss when the pressure of his disorder finally broke him completely, followed by the year long stay at the rehab facility. Her spirit had nearly been broken as well to see him so utterly shattered.

She had tried so hard to solve his murder, even though she had been ordered off the case. Watched helplessly as Javi and Kevin ran themselves into the ground trying to solve it, only to have it grind to a halt for lack of forensic evidence. She even swallowed her pride and visited the one man he swore she never wanted to see again to make that one last Castle Style "Hail Mary" shot at trying to close it.

Saw the guilt over not being able to give Rick the closure he deserved eat poor Javi alive. To the point where he returned to ESU because he just could not bring himself to be a detective any more. He wasn't the only one. She herself also lost her zeal for detective work after that case and finally succumbed to the inexorable pull most detectives with her record and solve rate were faced with. The move up the promotion grid.

Castle had needed her on a more regular basis, as routines were paramount for keeping his disorder in check. Routines meant safety and security, which allowed him to cope with his disease and help him find ways to manage the occasional bump in the road. She busted her ass studying for the lieutenant's exam every night, and sitting by his bedside in the rehab facility every day, bright and early.

Though she never realized it at the time, her tendency toward obsession, that desire to place one part of her life in front of all others never really went away after her mother's case was solved and the mastermind was punished for his crimes. It merely found a new focus.

Just like she had before with her mother's case, or her job when things got hard, she now buried herself in Rick's care. By the time she had realized the direction Alexis had taken with her life, her course had been inexorably set, her mind made up.

She had challenged the young redhead's decision, just like she had always wished her own father had done instead of drowning his pain in a bottle, but by then it had been much to late for that. Fortunately, Alexis Castle had a much more sensible head on her shoulders at twenty-two than she had had at age nineteen. Castle's daughter had fully thought this through like she had with every other aspect of her life. She had clearer reasoning, much more attainable goals, and more well thought out plan for her life. She had been looking to the future, not trying to fix the mistakes of the past.

Kate had done her best to support Alexis in this endeavor once she knew she couldn't convince her to change her mind, just like her father would have done. She even convinced the rehab facility to let her take Rick with her to Alexis' graduation from the academy. He was doped to the gills, barely knew where he was, but he was there and lucid enough to applaud at the appropriate times to cheer his baby bird on. Which was one step above where her own father had been once upon a time.

When Alexis spotted him in his wheelchair in the front row as the Police Commissioner pinned the badge on her chest, she had burst into tears.

* * *

Alexis had been busy after that, working her way up the promotion grid, first as a patrol officer then making detective faster than she had working Vice, through hard work and dogged determination, faster than most male detectives did either. Though she had always found time to call and keep up with her family until she had been approached by the FBI for an undercover assignment. They knew they were infiltrated and needed a fresh, Irish-looking face. After one last phone call to say she might be away for a while, she had practically disappeared from the face of the earth.

Alexis had been undercover in Boston for nearly a month when Kate made captain.

It had been the worst two years of Rick's life since he was discharged from the rehab facility. There was rarely any word from her except for the occasional phone call or text message from Will Sorenson, her case officer, to let them know she was still alive. Every day they were afraid Will would show up at their door to tell them she was dead. Kate dreaded going to the precinct and leaving him by himself in the loft for fear that Rick would have to face that alone.

Rick went nearly catatonic the day Will did show up at their door and told them about the assassination attempt and the two agents he had handpicked for her detail that had been complicit in it, having been paid an obscene amount of money to deliver her into the hands of the Irish mobsters sent to kill her. It was one of the worst of his episodes Kate had ever witnessed. He had backpedaled and fled as soon as Will finished talking and locked himself in the their bathroom refusing to come out.

Will had made an insensitive remark about how his little girl handled the affair better than Castle did. Kate punched him in the mouth without warning or preamble before bodily throwing him out of the loft and having Sergei roughly escort him out of the building.

It had taken her most of the night after she had wrapped her bloodied knuckles to coax him to unlock the bathroom door and let her in to comfort him, give him his meds, and help him to bed. She had taken the weekend off and spent nearly all of it comforting him, soothing him enough to go to sleep.

* * *

Not long after that, Jim Beckett's liver bean to fail. She had known he was on the liver transplant list, was even a match, but her own medical history precluded her as a donor. Thankfully Rick had recovered almost fully from his recent episode by then and Alexis was in more constant contact now that the trial had begun. (always from the courthouse, no chances were being taken with her safety after that incident) He was reasonably self sufficient by then, enough to understand why Kate spent so much time out of the house.

She spent the last night he was alive at her dad's bedside where his last words had been to comfort her, to tell her that everything would be all right, before he finally fell silent and breathed his last. Kate had a small breakdown of her own that night and by the following day completely fell apart.

After that, a curious thing happened.

In spite of everything that had weighed Richard Castle down, everything that had torn him apart, and how completely broken he truly was, Kate Beckett learned that the one thing about him that mattered was still there, buried beneath all of the broken pieces of his life was his heart, which beat only for her and Alexis.

For her sake and hers alone, Richard Edgar Castle rallied.

The one person still alive on this planet who could pull her back from the brink rose like a phoenix from the ashes of his own destruction one final time to save her from herself. He was her rock during her father's funeral and when he was interred that weekend, laid to rest with his beloved Johanna. During her month long sabbatical that followed Rick somehow managed to find the strength within himself to help her knit her broken pieces back together.

He was the foundation from which she rose, her solid ground, her North Star, even though it had taken everything he had left to give. He crumbled utterly when it was over. Kate swore that from that day forward that she would never again abandon or forsake him. Where he went, she would follow.

As his words had saved her from her mother's death and given her purpose, his absolute devotion, and willingness to court his own self destruction for her had done the same after her father's.

It was for this reason that she had moved heaven and earth to convince both Chief of D's Victoria Gates and the brass at One Police Plaza to allow Alexis to be assigned to the 12th Precinct. Though she never revealed this to a living soul, she wanted all of her family in one place again, where she could protect them. Between herself and Alexis, she knew that Rick would be fine. After a lengthy recovery, he started writing again and his reboot of the Nikki Heat series was flying off the shelves.

* * *

Alexis was safe now though and was regaining her health at remarkable rate. She would be back at the precinct soon. Dr. Burke (who had retired from public practice, but still did the consulting work for the NYPD to keep busy) had cleared her as fit for duty and she had a date with the pistol range in a couple days to re-qualify with her service weapon. She would be back in action with plenty of time to spare to get back in the swing of things before the month was out and Tyson's cycle began again.

She knew this was foremost on Alexis' mind because she had seen the calendar pages taped to the mirror in her bedroom when she had gone to pack a bag for her. Red x's marking the days before the month was over and a circle around the next anticipated date for a body drop.

The two of them and the homicide team at the 12th would find away to take down this last demon from their collective family's collective closet before they could rest. Jerry Tyson would spend the rest of his natural life in a cage upstate, or she would personally put a bullet in his skull.

The US Marshal's service and the NYPD may be content to look for Jerry Tyson, but she was going to _**hunt**_ and when she found him, she would make certain that 3XK would rue the day he woke the huntress.

* * *

One week later

Jeremy Christian sat at his table with a recently purchased laptop in his apartment, having just finished a day long hack into the NCIC database. After his five day deviation to exact his revenge and make sure it could never be traced back to him or anyone at the 12th Precinct, he had work to do.

This was much harder than the way Jerry chose his victims, but because he loved Alexis, he was not content to semi stalk random blonde women and murder them. Not content to kill women who had done nothing wrong other than to catch Jerry Tyson's eye. (or his as the first three victims in this spree had)

If he had to kill to get to Tyson, if he had to continue to play his sick game, he was determined to at least target women the world would never miss and could live without. His last victims would be culled from some of the worst, most vile female offenders in New York according to the NCIC database. The New York female offenders section of which would be downloaded in a few minutes.

He had written the search parameters himself according to Tyson's preferences and his rapidly strengthening convictions. In college, he had studied the case file of a serial killer named Dexter Morgan from almost a decade ago who had done something similar...hunting other serial killers. It had taken the better part of a decade to catch him, and only because he had gone ballistic after his sister Debra's brutal murder.

He would borrow a page from the man's playbook...kill only those who needed killing. A fitting end to one of the most prolific serial killers since Son of Sam, brought down, ironically by the methods of a contemporary.

The poetry of that appealed to to him. He wondered if Jerry would appreciate it as much when he had his hands around his stepfather's throat.


	13. Rise

**Chapter Thirteen**

**Rise**

* * *

_Makes me that much stronger  
Makes me work a little bit harder  
It makes me that much wiser  
So thanks for making me a fighter  
Made me learn a little bit faster  
Made my skin a little bit thicker  
Makes me that much smarter  
So thanks for making me a fighter _

"_Fighter" by Christina Aguilera_

* * *

_Alexis was safe now though and was regaining her health at remarkable rate. She would be back at the precinct soon. Dr. Burke (who had retired from public practice, but still did the consulting work for the NYPD to keep busy) had cleared her as fit for duty and she had a date with the pistol range in a couple days to re-qualify with her service weapon. She would be back in action with plenty of time to spare to get back in the swing of things before the month was out and Tyson's cycle began again. _

_Kate knew this was foremost on Alexis' mind because she had seen the calendar pages taped to the mirror in her bedroom when she had gone to pack a bag for her. Red X's marking the days before the month was over and a circle around the next anticipated date for a body drop._

_The two of them and the homicide team at the 12th would find a way to take down this last demon from their collective family's closet before they could rest. Jerry Tyson would spend the rest of his natural life in a cage upstate, or she would personally put a bullet in his skull._

_The US Marshal's service and the NYPD may be content to look for Jerry Tyson, but she was going to **hunt** and when she found him, she would make certain that 3XK would rue the day he woke the huntress_.

* * *

**12th Precinct 11:00 AM**

The Booming report of a Sig Sauer P-226 echoed off the walls of the 12th Precinct's pistol range. Alexis Castle, her fiery red hair pulled back in a long braid down her back, the required ear and eye protection on, had arrived in the sub-basement pistol range at five o'clock AM, determined to cover this last hurdle to get back in battery. It was almost time...a couple more weeks and according to the 3XK timetable the killings would begin again.

They would only have a week to get him before he disappeared again, to return God-knows-when.

Her skills had atrophied further than she had thought after only two weeks, she had been struggling with her groupings all morning. She was hitting the target silhouette well enough to meet the minimum standard required by the NYPD, but not with the lethal accuracy she favored. Accuracy she would need if the stories she had heard were anything even close to accurate.

The more frustrated she got, the worse her shooting became, shots landing all over the place. She knew she was only making things harder on herself this way...holding herself back, so she stopped firing. With a frustrated sigh, she ejected the empty magazine, locked the slide open, set her pistol on the counter and stepped back.

While she retracted the the paper target and exchanged it for a fresh one, she did her best to shake off her frustration. Rotating her head to work the tension out of her neck and working her arms while performing the breathing exercises that a lifetime of dance and exercise classes had long ago taught her.

She picked up the .40 caliber Sig that served officially as her "backup" piece, but in truth was her primary weapon in the field. Her most trusted sidearm. She still carried her NYPD issue Glock 17, but only because she was required by regulations to do so.

She had a smaller Glock 26 locked in her desk that she used for undercover assignments, in case she needed something small enough to fit in a clutch with her badge. She cleaned it regularly, practiced with it occasionally, but it was not a trusted companion like the Sig that had saved her life back when even the FBI Agents tasked to protect her had betrayed her and she had been forced to maker her stand alone.

The Sig Sauer that sat on her hip in a quick draw rig in plain view just below the bottom of the short waisted jackets she favored. (she never could understand her stepmother's fascination with wearing Burberry trench coats while on-duty) After the undercover assignment in Boston, and the subsequent assassination attempt before the trial, Alexis did her best to be combat ready at all times.

She had only gotten sloppy twice in her career, the second time only recently.

Both times had nearly cost her her life. Something she knew would send her father crashing into a self destructive tailspin that he, and by extension Kate, would never, ever recover from. She could not allow that to happen, so she obsessed even more with becoming better, stronger, faster. She had remade herself in Detective Kate Beckett's image, transformed herself from the shy bookish sci fi loving teenage girl into something stronger, powerful more feral.

Like Kate, she had been forced by cruel fate to become a huntress.

Alexis ran out the new paper target and fixed a new sight picture in her head before she slapped home a fresh magazine of .40 caliber rounds in to the Sig and thumbed the release that closed the slide. The image of Jerry Tyson.

This time she cleared her mind, relaxed her stance and opened fire, sending ten rounds downrange. This time, when she set her weapon down, she had placed five rounds in a tight grouping clustered together in the ten ring and five more dead center in the target's forehead. As she ran the target back to turn in to the Captain to get her service weapon back she eyed it with dark satisfaction.

Jerry Tyson had escaped his encounter with Kate and her dad on that bridge most likely due to to NYPD issue body armor. (according to his written statement, Tyson had been in the cell bay in a full uniform, so it stood to reason) He had to have, since she knew that back them her dad hit what he shot at with absolute precision.

She was determined not to repeat her father's one mistake that night. She would aim for his head and shoot to kill. When the time came, if Tyson wouldn't come quietly, she would end this nightmare for them once and for all.

He would be prey for the huntress.

* * *

**Twenty Minutes Later**

"Why do you carry that _cannon_?" her partner, Rose Freeman asked, causing Alexis to jump in surprise, as the dark haired woman openly admired the rather large bullet holes in the paper target.

"Aside from the intimidation factor and the nice big holes it makes? It was my dad's." Alexis replied, after the shock had worn off. She had never realized how light on her feet Rose was. "When I'm carrying it, it's like taking a piece of him into the field with me."

She didn't need to burden Rose with the memory burned in her brain from when she had taken it from him the night he broke down the first time, sitting on the floor of his office with this very weapon in his lap, the safety off and a round in the pipe, broken glass everywhere, his eyes wild with absolute panic, unsure where he was.

She doubted even Kate could have gotten close enough to him that night to relieve him of it, but he had let her approach him, her voice the only lifeline his swirling chaotic mind would accept. Her hands the only ones he would allow close enough to him to remove this weapon from his possession. She had put it back in the safe until the paramedic sedated him and took him to the hospital.

When she needed a non-issue sidearm to take with her on her undercover mission, her father himself had shoved it into her hands. It saved her life the night the assassins came and she had carried it ever since.

"I think I understand," Rose replied, pulling a necklace from under her blouse, a pendant at the end of it. "This was my brother's...I don't know when he had it made, but my dad said the woman on it was his mother." She slipped it back into her blouse, "I carried it the entire time I was undercover as _'Crow' _to remember him."

Alexis nodded, figuring the two of them really weren't all that different now. They had both been orphans of the storm, both brought to police work by personal tragedy. She owed Rosie, not just her life, but her father's too.

"Come on, Rosie," she said, indicating the door to the stairs, "lets go get my gun back so we can get back to work."

* * *

**Jeremy Christian's Apartment**

Jeremy had found the three women he had been seeking, possibly the three most detestable women imaginable, in spite of their good looks. All three had rap sheets as long as his arm, if they still used paper. He had re-arranged their records to change their current parole officers to a fictitious one he had created. A character he would assume for their benefit to gain their trust, or in this case, their compliance.

Each one was a two striker who could not afford that third strike to dens them to prison for life. He would pretend to be corrupt...let them think they could barter his cooperation to keep them "on parole" and when the appointed time came for each of them to "reimburse" him for his services on their behalf, each would become the new victim of the triple killer.

It was still murder, he was still taking lives in cold blood, but at least these would be deaths he could live with. Or once in their lives they would be advancing a noble, if morally skewed cause.

They would be contributing to removing from the world the cancer that is Jerry Tyson. He would light a candle later, perhaps go to confession for the first time since he was nine years old.

Until then, he had a mission in life. A purpose, and he would shoulder his burden and move forward.

It wasn't much, but it was all he had left.


	14. The Demon Sleeps

**Chapter Fourteen**  
**The Demon Sleeps**

* * *

_Behind these eyes a demon sleeps__,  
__A monster of my own creation  
__Within my mind's dark caverns creeps  
__Needing but a moment's fury to awaken._

_I lock it away within myself  
__In those dark caverns it knows so well  
__and bind it down in its dark larder|  
__Bound in chains of purest will._

_I walk the world with innocent face  
__Never showing the conflict behind my guise  
__ever fearing what may come to pass  
__Lest anything wake the demon  
__Behind these eyes._

* * *

_Jeremy had found the three women he had been seeking, possibly the three most detestable women imaginable, in spite of their good looks. All three had rap sheets as long as his arm, if they still used paper. He had re-arranged their records to change their current parole officers to a fictitious one he had created. A character he would assume for their benefit to gain their trust, or in this case, their compliance._

_Each one was a two striker who could not afford that third strike to send them to prison for life. He would pretend to be corrupt...let them think they could barter his cooperation to keep them "on parole" and when the appointed time came for each of them to "reimburse" him for his services on their behalf, each would become the new victim of the triple killer._

_It was still murder, he was still taking lives in cold blood, but at least these would be deaths he could live with. For once in their lives they would be advancing a noble, if morally skewed cause._

_They would be contributing to removing from the world the cancer that is Jerry Tyson. He would light a candle later, perhaps go to confession for the first time since he was nine years old._

Jeremy Christian had never felt less conflict than he had after meeting each of them. Alexis had become his standard for what a beautiful woman was supposed to be, and none of these women fit that mold. Though they would all be what one would consider beautiful after spending an hour with each of them...pretending to be interested in them, reminding them of their status as two strikers.

As he had separately looked into the eyes of each of them he saw women he may have, at one time been attracted to, but since meeting Alexis and seeing what the ideal is, they all fell short. He felt like he needed a long shower after dealing with them.

The first that he had chosen had murdered both of her children because the man she was obsessed with didn't want an instant family, only interested in siring children of his own. She had strangled each of them as she put them to bed, then to dispose of them and cover her crime she burned her trailer to the frame rails. She had gotten paroled for good behavior and an overly sympathetic parole board on the condition that she seek therapy and took her meds. Something from the records check he had done and the drug test he had administered he knew she wasn't doing.

The second was a repeat offender, a black widow who had been loosely connected to the deaths of six men, but had only been convicted for criminally negligent homicide for two of them. He didn't know what her damage was, but there was a quiet evil in her eyes that much he was sure of. She had gotten very good at killing and covering her tracks. He would have to be very careful with her. She was the most dangerous. She was never going to turn her back on him so he would need to rely on other means to seal the deal.

The third would actually be the most difficult. Not because she was particularly dangerous but because she was so blindly devoted to the man she had been with that she had subsumed herself to what he wanted to the point where she had committed two murders for him. Even after he had thrown her under the bus for both murders to decrease his own rape convictions and testified against her at trial she still wept openly for him.

She was only out now because her lawyer had gotten her a retrial because of ineffective counsel and gotten her off on a diminished capacity defense. She reminded him so much of his mother it was frightening. Only she had no son to save her to be willing to fight for her, and a testament to what his mother was becoming, if she hadn't already. She would be last, not because he found her repulsive or off putting like the other two. She was pathetically so far gone that he felt a surge of sympathy for her. He would do for her the only thing he could do for the poor . Put her our of her misery.

He only hoped that when all was said and done, he wasn't so far gone that Alexis would no longer recognize him, or he, himself. Worse yet, he was worried that he had worked so hard and striven for so long to put an end to Jerry Tyson only to become him.

He was beginning to wonder if that was indeed Jerry's goal from the start.

* * *

Alexis Castle's first case after being reinstated to active duty had, at first presented all of the hallmarks of a standard pop and drop. Exactly what Captain Beckett had wanted to ease her wounded redheaded stepdaughter back into her role as lead detective of the 12th Precinct.

Just as Alexis was musing about how little police work really changes, regardless of the advances in technology and procedure, she noticed the sad, wistful expression on her partner Rosemary's face as she was looking down at the body of their young raven haired haired victim. It dawned upon her that this case would be far from standard. Little did she know this one would become what was considered, even now, to be "Beckett flavored" a term that had long ago became the technical term for one of "the freaky ones."

"What do we have, Lanie?" Alexis asked, still not quite able to shake the self image of being the teenage intern, hanging around and making herself useful while she tried to figure out what the appeal police work had become for her dad when he had never seemed to take anything seriously before. Little did she know she would end up developing a passion for it herself.

It was a much simpler time then, and she was a very different person. That fresh faced red haired girl was long since gone.

"Caucasian female, approximately five feet tall, cause of death is most likely the single small caliber gunshot wound to the head." Lanie indicated the round hole in the center of her forehead. "Ligature marks on the wrists and ankles suggest restraint for a significant period of time."

"From the liver temp, she was killed less than twenty four hours ago. Judging from the lack of blood at the scene she was obviously killed and dumped here.

"Any identification?" Alexis asked next, sliding almost effortlessly back into detective mode.

"No wallet, no tattoos, no identifying marks," Lanie replied, a sad almost forlorn expression on her face as she relayed the information in a a crisp professional manner, "a few healed over shallow marks indicative of self cutting as a preteen. I'll run her prints to see if she's in the system."

"Delphine," Rose stated without preamble, her quivering voice barely more than a whisper, "her name was Delphine."

"What was that Rose?" Alexis replied, the expression on her face switching gears from cool professionalism to concern for her partner's welfare in the span of a heartbeat as her eyes met those of Rose Freeman, "Do you know this girl?"

"Delphine was the name she went by in the Société des Vampyre as they have come to call themselves." Rose muttered blankly as all emotion drained from her voice. "Her real name was Kennedy Marshall. She kinda latched onto and "adopted" me when I was undercover in the community a few years ago."

A single tear coursed down Rose's cheek as she continued, "She was a shy, sweet girl, a truly peaceful and gentle soul with demons plaguing that she alone knew the depths of. The only person she was _ever_ a threat to was herself and she would never dream of harming anyone. I can't think of anyone in or out of the "community" who would want to harm her...much less kill her like this."

Before Alexis could say any more, or attempt to reach out to her, Rose turned and walked out of the alley, no one noting as her sadness slipped away and was gradually supplanted by a burning, simmering rage.


	15. The Plot Thickens

**Chapter Fifteen  
****The Plot Thickens**

* * *

_Hush little baby don't say a word,  
and never mind that noise you heard  
it's just the beast under your bed  
in your closet, in your head._

_Exit light, enter night,  
Take my hand, we're off to never never land._

_Metallica: Enter Sandman_

* * *

May 14th 2016  
1:45 AM

_It was dark...unusually dark that night. The moon was gone from the sky and the "City That Never Sleeps" was shrouded by a thick layer of fog that added definition to the line between the shadows and the light, making it easier for young Jeremy to remain unseen while he studied the door that led from the building out into the alley where he waited._

_He knew his target would be here tonight, knew she would be attending. His stepfather had been very specific about his target and in the manner of her death. Made him memorize her face, memorize everything about her appearance. _

_He knew her schedule, knew she would be here at exactly ten thirty PM, knew she would come out into the alley to sneak a smoke. That her bodyguard never followed her out of the building like he should have, like she was ducking him for a few minutes. She would slip a playbill into the door to hold it open as she slipped farther down the alley. Had watched, hidden in this very alley every night for three weeks and her routine never varied _

_He removed the playbill from the door as he followed her to where he could see her with her cigarette in a lacquered holder. He knew everything that he needed to know to complete this task. Everything except her name. Jerry had made him memorize every detail...except whom she was. Had made it quite clear he was never to know her name. It would be easier this way...a cleaner first kill._

_He told him over and over again, in that way he used when he pretended to care about his welfare (something Jeremy had known almost since the beginning wasn't the case) that the first kill would be difficult enough without complicating it with sentiment. _

_He had never trusted his "stepfather" not even in the beginning when Jerry had made every effort to charm him. Some innate sense had told him Jerry was not what he seemed...and he had been right. But the look that clouded the man's eye's as he related this particular detail, was likely the most honest thing Jerry had ever related to him...so this one time he did exactly what he was told._

_He finally catches sight of her, the cigarette holder in her fingers, exhaling the smoke into the night air. Her bodyguard nowhere in sight just like every other night. This time, though, he exited the shadows and approached, relaxing himself with the deep breathing techniques his drama club acting coach had taught him, looking every bit like the 15 year old busboy from the restaurant next door that he appeared to be. _

_He had never understood why Jerry had insisted on the acting classes, but he went, unprepared for the fact that he would like them. A small part of him truly enjoyed fooling people, even Jerry, it was why he had become so very good at it._

"_You have a light, Ma'am?" he asked the elderly redhead._

"_Aren't you a little young for this habit dear one?" the older woman remarked, her face softening with the same grandmotherly concern for his welfare that his own grandparents had once graced him with when he was ten, before his mother had poisoned them both in their hospital beds for no other reason, than Jerry Tyson told her to. _

_For the first time, doubt and guilt began to creep into his heart, past the poison that Jerry had been infecting him with for the last six years...guilt for what he was going to do. He tamped those rebellious thoughts down hard as the older woman rummaged in her pocket for her lighter. _

_The knife was suddenly in his hand, as if it had willed itself there, the practiced movement Jerry had instilled in him as he brought it up...the brief instant of fear as she tried to move away before he buried it into her back...once...twice...three times...then a fourth...the last one finally meeting his intended target...her kidneys, little knowing the first strike had actually slipped upward and bisected her diaphragm. _

_The silent "Why?" On her lips that lacked the air behind it to find voice. The last look on her face...a look of sympathy...for him...her killer. They broke his heart...but it was too late._

"_I'm sorry...I'm so sorry...I'm so sorry..." his tears dripped onto her blouse and into her hair._

_He burst into tears, managing to keep his light dinner down. He had made a point of eating very little...remembering the first time Jerry had made him kill with a knife...he had wretched his guts out all over the floor. Jerry hadn't even been angry...like he had expected it._

_He propped her body up against the garbage bags...like the older picture of a brunette woman taken before he was born...the other photo he had been made to memorize. _

"_You didn't deserve this...I'm so sorry..." he whispered...brushing kiss to her forehead then slipped into the shadows...just before all hell broke loose. He dropped the knife into a sewer pipe...after listening for moving water then making sure it went all the way in. The sewer water ensuring even if it were found, no blood or DNA would be found on it..._

* * *

Present Day

Jeremy Christian woke in tears...like he always had whenever he dreamed of the poor, kind-faced redheaded old woman he had murdered when he was only fifteen years old.

He remembered the next few days like they were yesterday. He rode the Lake Shore Limited home in a small sleeping car the following morning, feeling sick inside for the godawful thing he done. For a man who had no love or respect for life other than his own. A man who's hatred and spite for the two people whom he perceived had wronged him was slowly driving him insane.

When his mother picked him up at the train station in Rensselaer he had made the mistake of voicing his misgivings about what Jerry had asked him to do. Unsurprisingly, she took his "insolence" straight to Tyson, who had his own mother beat him to within in inch of his life with a wide belt.

The remaining light marks from from that beating could still be found on the backs of his shoulders and the small of her back. He had been kept out of school for a week while his mother nursed him back to health. Reminding him constantly that he had done this to himself, and that Jerry was not to be questioned or defied. His own mother, had sided with Tyson against him...violently. As long as that man lived, she would never be free.

He never again spoke a word against the man in her presence, but in his mind the wheels had begun turning as he plotted to free his mother, and the world from the evil that was Jerry Tyson.

When Alexis had noted the scars on his back and shoulders, he deflected, stating they had been done long ago by an abusive boyfriend of his mother's when he was very young. The look of absolute sympathy that crossed her features nearly brought tears to his eyes.

After everything her family had suffered over the years, all she herself had endured (some things, which to this day, she never, ever spoke of, not even to him) she still had sympathy, still had tears, still had love left for him, who did not in any way deserve any of them. It was in that moment when he knew that he had fallen in love with her. Made him decide to alter his plan for vengeance, made him decide that, no matter what occurred, Tyson could not have her. He could not be allowed to crush her, like he had crushed his mother.

The world would be a much darker, even less appealing place without Alexis Castle in it. No matter how much he might love his mother could not, _would not_ rescue her at Alexis' expense.

If that made him weak, so be it.

* * *

Later that Day

After returning to the precinct from the crime scene, Alexis began setting up the touch screen electronic smart board that had long since replaced the whiteboard that had dominated the space when her desk had been occupied by Kate Beckett. Adding the image of the deceased taken from the crime scene along with the details, setting the board up for use on their present.

The factual information from the tablets they carried instead of pad and pen would automatically update the board in real time, not to mention update the database in the captain's office, though not directly informing the captain of their whereabouts, if they went offline during a case could be use to track down their last known location whilst on duty.

Gone were the days of detectives going rogue while working cases without informing their captain, or working cases off the books. Not all of her father and stepmother's effects on the NYPD were lauded in the news media or whispered second hand by the rookies.

Kate Beckett's obsession with her mother's case had made it necessary for the department to change how it operated. Her censure for her actions the first time she fell prey to it as a uniform, the aftermath of her shooting in 2011, and her later suspension for conduct unbecoming an officer were now viewed as cries for help that had gone unheeded by the department. As such policies were shifted. No longer was the department turning a blind eye to unofficial investigations off the books.

When Alexis and Rose hit the streets that evening to pay a visit to to the local hangout of the vampire community, Rose had asked to stop by her place first for a couple of things she said would "make their interviews much easier into the death of their victim.

When Rose came out of her bedroom carrying to long dark colored jackets one navy and one nearly blood red, she nearly balked.

"Alexis, since your Dad and the Captain worked my brother's case, and the serial killer case I worked, the community has become a lot more clannish and insular than they were before. They have become paranoid almost to Morlock's level, and he's seeking help at Bellevue. If they think you're a cop or don't have a reason to be there they will freeze us out. I can get us in to see Countess Bathory, but I will need you to follow my lead and let me do the talking. They know me."

"The long coat?" Alexis asked?

To hide the badge and gun, Rose replied, "cops make them nervous, we need to find the actual suspect, not make nearly everyone we meet start acting like one." the slight upturn of her lips revealing the "additions" to her canines.

"And the veneers?" Alexis stated with a sardonic grin.

"They provide me a certain status that "normals" don't have," Rose replied.

"Whatever works." Alexis mumbled, though she saw the point. If they had been dealing with the Irish mob, she was certain the shoe would be on the other foot and Rose would be deferring to her judgment in the interviews.

She was sorry she wouldn't get to meet with Morlock himself, it would have made an interesting story to tell her dad the next time they had Sunday dinner at the loft. He had never gotten over the fact that the man had bitten him. She swore he had cleaned his neck every two hours for weeks afterward. Though in the early days of his and Kate's relationship he _had_ returned home from Remy's occasionally with a fresh bite mark on his neck after Kate had bought him dinner, which she had studiously pretended not to notice, because...ew.

Over the next few days the case had taken shape. It had turned out that another "lost soul" that Delphine had befriended had brought danger to her door. He worked as a drug mule, and on one of their "dates" she had seen something, and someone she was not supposed to. She had been tortured to find out what she knew and then discarded like a piece of garbage.

Though the case got turned over to Narcotics, they had allowed Rose to slap the cuffs on the piece of crap who had tortured her friend and applied the final bullet to her head that finished her off. His name was Jonathan Ryder, a mid-level enforcer for one of the major drug cartels. She was not gentle.

He would get a lengthy stay in a Club Fed, instead of Ossining, but at least she had gotten some measure of justice for her friend. Enough for her to sleep easier at night anyway.

Alexis knew that another deadline was looming in the next few days. She had crossed off all but three of the days on the calendar taped to her bedside mirror. Jerry Tyson would strike again in three days.

When that happened, the 12th Precinct's Homicide division would have no other cases.

The time would come to finish this once and for all.

**Author's note: As many of you may have noticed, writing cases is not my strong suit. This case is merely a device to move the story forward. We are getting into the final stretch now as the story is winding down. More to follow.


	16. Darkening Skies

**Chapter Sixteen  
****Darkening Skies**

* * *

_A last fire will rise behind those eyes  
Black house will rock, blind boys don't lie  
Immortal fear, that voice so clear  
Through broken walls, that scream I hear_

Cry, little sister - Thou shall not fall  
Come to your brother - Thou shall not die  
Unchain me, sister - Thou shall not fear  
Love is with your brother - Thou shall not kill

_Gerard McMann: Cry Little Sister_

* * *

It rained the afternoon that Kennedy Marshall (aka "Delphine") was laid to rest. No one had come forward to claim her remains, so Rose had purchased the marker and had her interred at her own expense in a plot in Forest Hills Cemetery. The modest stone read:

**_Kennedy Marshall_**

**"_Delphine"_**

**_Oct. 31, 2002-September 1, 2023_**

**_May your restless soul finally know peace_**

The plot that had been purchased by and for her parents. Her dad had long since decided that he would never be buried there, never be laid to rest next to the woman who had killed both his first wife and their son, her brother. Though a small part of her still loved her mother, Rose understood.

It was the first time that Rose had dressed in her full vampire regalia, including her veneers, since the end of her undercover investigation nearly three years ago. The first time she had cloaked herself in her _"Crow" _persona in almost that long. But the Société des Vampyre had become so much a part of Kennedy's life that she had given herself almost fully to being "Delphine."

Even the name tag she wore as a waitress bore that name instead of her own. She had clearly come to New York city as a runaway and had thrown what little money she made waiting tables into that new identity as a means of distancing herself from the life she had fled. The horrors of which she went to great pains never to speak of...to anyone.

The young woman had crashed on the couch at the apartment Rose had been provided with to maintain her cover when she had nowhere else to stay. She remembered watching the girl sleep fitfully whimpering and crying out _"No daddy...please...no...stop..."_ in her sleep. It broke her heart to know that such a kind, gentle, tender soul, a girl who would give the shirt off her back and the food off her own plate, had such darkness and pain in her psyche.

She would disappear with the dawn, the couch neatly squared away, leaving almost no sign she had ever been there. As if she were a ghost, haunting her own life, afraid to leave any footprint of her own presence behind, lest the demons that haunted her might find her.

Tonight, the Société des Vampyre was saying goodbye to one of their own, and she would honor Delphine's memory the only way she knew how...by becoming "Crow" one last time. Though Alexis had not known Delphine before this case, she came anyway, to stand by her wearing a black dress, Rose knew that her partner understood loss, that it damaged her sense of fair play that no one would claim her.

Rose spied the small, quiet older woman standing at the back of the mourners, dressed from head to toe in black, including a veil down over her face, almost, but not quite covering her blackened right eye. A single white rose, counter to the blood red ones the others carried, was clutched in her pale hands that she dropped into Delphine's grave atop the simple coffin. The timid woman recoiled only a little when Rose approached her and revealed her badge, her eyes almost never leaving the modest white stone.

"Who are you, and how do you know Delphine?" Rose asked.

"My name is Patricia Marshall, I'm her mother." she whispered, her voice a mixture of sorrow and shame. "How did my daughter die, Detective?" she asked quietly.

"Trust me, Mrs. Marshall, you don't want to know."

"Did she suffer?" she asked and if Rose had had any doubt that this was indeed Delphine's mother, those doubts were now gone.

"I'm afraid so, yes." she replied.

"Did you find the man who killed her?" she asked.

"Yes." Rose replied.

"Good." the woman replied, a coldness in the reply that belied the sadness in her eyes.

"I can tell you loved her very much, Mrs. Marshall, how did she end up on the streets of New York?" Rose asked. Finally giving voice to the question that had been burning in her heart since she had determined the woman identified herself.

"When I found out what my husband, was doing to her, I did the only thing I could for Kennedy, detective. He is a very possessive, man, but until then, I thought he confined his abuse to me. When I found out that wasn't true, I bought her a bus ticket to New York City, gave her as much money as I could get my hands on and information about the shelters for runaways here. Told her to find a place to hide and to never come back, no matter what. Her father had long ago made sure I would have nowhere to go, but I wanted more for my daughter than to be Walter Marshall's plaything."

"I have family farther upstate, but he knew about them, and he would have found her there and dragged her back, this was the only way to keep her safe. When I found out we were moving to the city, I was horrified that he had found her, but he had given no sign that he had done so, so I kept quiet and prayed I was wrong."

She had assumed that Delphine's killer had kept quiet to shield his employers, but now she wasn't so sure, as a notation from the autopsy report floated unbidden into Rose's mind.

..._Anomalous DNA sample from vaginal swab, 98.44 percent likely to be from a blood relative either her father or other close relative..._

She had seen the suppressed anger in Dr. Parrish's eyes when she had personally brought the report of her findings to the precinct. Alexis later told her that she had almost never seen her former mentor this tightly wound up about a case since the Boylan Plaza bombing case. Scuttlebutt from the OCME building had said that quiet sobbing and breaking glass could be heard coming from her office after she had finished her report.

"Leave your husband to me, Mrs. Marshall." Rose said when she could trust herself to speak without the rage in her voice as a truer picture began to form in her mind of the events of Kennedy Marshall's last hours at the hands of her own father. Her rage finding a focus, as she pressed a business card bearing the contact information of a battered woman's shelter that was funded by none other than Richard Castle in his mother's name. It was known for helping such women hide from their abusers, a cause that had been near to Martha Rodger's heart before she died, and bore her name.

Rose knew she couldn't go after Walter Marshall herself, but she knew somebody who could, somebody who had been closer to Delphine than even she had been...Morlock. She had always tried to take care of him, bringing him food and bandages, finding dark places for him to hide from the sun if he couldn't get back to his lair before daylight. He had taken her under his protection, much like he had done with her brother. He had been in treatment when she was undercover.

He would be here well after dark to pay his respects to Delphine in private. Crow would be waiting.

The street would take care of it.

* * *

Three Days later, The following article appeared in the New York Daily Ledger

**Upstate, New York Businessman Found Dead In Central Park**

Walter A. Marshall, a recent emigre from Utica, NY was found  
murdered in Central Park, the apparent victim of a violent homicide.  
The NYPD had little comment other than his throat had been torn out,  
nearly decapitating him and nearly every bone in his body had been broken.

He is survived by his wife of twenty years,Patricia Marshall  
and a three year old daughter Melody. The NYPD currently have no leads  
and have attributed his death to a random spree killing. Anyone with  
information about this attack is encouraged to contact NYPD Detective  
Rosemary Freeman of 12th Precinct Homicide division.

* * *

The following day

Alexis Castle had gotten the call that morning and headed for the crime scene she had been dreading for the last month. 3XK had struck exactly on schedule as she entered the apartment of the latest victim, Delores Jacobs, age 38. Found on the floor of her apartment, body in full rigor in the funerary pose. This woman, however had put up a fight before she had succumbed, due to the disarray of her small apartment. There was no sign of blood or skin under her fingernails, but there were signs she had had fought...hard while being strangled.

In an evidence bag was an NYPD detective's shield bearing the service number of Kevin Ryan.

3XK had struck again.

Later that afternoon, a text message was received by Captain Kate Beckett and Lt. Kevin Ryan at precisely the same time from an untraceable burner phone triangulated to have come from a tower near Central Park.

_3XK-4 NYPD-0  
__Have a nice day  
__Catch me if you can._

_Jerry_

The game was once again on.


	17. Federal Involvement

**Chapter Seventeen  
****Federal Involvement**

* * *

_Liberty or death, what we so proudly hail  
Once you provoke her, rattling of her tail  
Never begins it, never, but once engaged...  
Never surrenders, showing the fangs of rage_

_Don't tread on me_

_So be it_  
_Threaten no more_  
_To secure peace is to prepare for war_  
_So be it_  
_Settle the score_  
_Touch me again for the words that you'll hear evermore..._

_Don't tread on me_

_Love it or live it, she with the deadly bite_  
_Quick is the blue tongue, forked as lighting strike_  
_Shining with brightness, always on surveillance_  
_The eyes, they never close, emblem of vigilance_

_Don't tread on me_

_Metallica: Don't Tread On Me_  
_  
_

* * *

_Previous _

_Alexis Castle had gotten the call that morning and headed for the crime scene she had been dreading for the last month. 3XK had struck exactly on schedule as she entered the apartment of the latest victim, Delores Jacobs, age 38. Found on the floor of her apartment, body in full rigor in the funerary pose. This woman, however had put up a fight before she had succumbed, due to the disarray of her small apartment. There was no sign of blood or skin under her fingernails, but there were signs she had had fought...hard while being strangled. _

_In an evidence bag was an NYPD detective's shield bearing the service number of Kevin Ryan._

_3XK had struck again. _

_Later that afternoon, a text message was received by Captain Kate Beckett and Lt. Kevin Ryan at precisely the same time from an untraceable burner phone triangulated to have come from a tower near Central Park._

_3XK-4 NYPD-0  
__Have a nice day  
__Catch me if you can.  
__Jerry_

_The game was once again on._

* * *

The line of black suburbans with federal plates slowly wound around the corner of 5th and Lexington before pulling up to the still active crime scene at Delores Jacobs' apartment. As the federal agents and crime scene technicians fanned out Special Agent In Charge Jordan Shaw stepped out of the lead Suburban and began barking orders to Special Agent Avery, who was actually supposed to be in charge here, having taken over her job when she got kicked upstairs almost six years ago.

The Scott Dunn Case had put her on the map, at the FBI and had gotten her moved up the promotion grid. She had fought it as hard as she could, but her daughter was in high school and her marriage had become strained. When her husband learned of the promotion offer and her hesitation to accept, for the first time in their marriage he had given her an ultimatum.

It wasn't often that the head of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit took an active interest in a single case, but then again, it wasn't often that Serial killers came back from the dead after nearly a decade. They rarely relinquished their killing for as long as Jerry Tyson did and then simply come back and pick up where they left off as if nothing ever happened. The higher functioning ones usually just moved on and picked up someplace else.

Usually when they disappeared from the face of the earth for so long it was because they either died, or went to prison, or some other incapacitating event made them incapable. More often than not it was a copycat or an attention seeker hoping to get their name in the papers. Those were easy enough to spot, as they tended to make mistakes or get critical details wrong, especially details that were kept out of the media.

For example, two years after Scott Dunn's conviction, an obsessed fan of his books, who fancied himself as a sidekick of sorts had attempted to get him exonerated by recreating his murders, so Dunn could go back to writing...and killing again. Shaw had caught on to the copycat after the second crime scene, oddly enough with help from an unlikely source...Scott Dunn himself.

The man's ego was so completely in full force, that he had actually been offended that someone so inferior to him had tried to copy his work. Infuriated that he had gotten nearly all of the subtle nuances wrong and was equally offended that the media had tied him to the case. Each of his killings had been unique, themed to take into account his intended target. She had let him have his delusions of superiority, had even stroked his ego and caught the copycat.

This series of killings did not present as the case of a copycat. Every single detail of every part of Tyson's pattern of behavior was spot on, down to the last detail, as if the Marcus Gates incident which allowed Tyson to make his escape over a decade ago had never occurred. As if he had risen from the dead, looking to renew his cycle of violence because he felt like it. No copycat ever got the original killer's methods right to this degree.

It had always been her habit when she stepped in took the reigns of an investigation from local law enforcement to to the most recent crime scene first...take charge and establish her dominance. She had done this many times during her career with the FBI. She tried to be no nonsense and congenial when she took over a case and tried not to seem like she was stepping on toes, especially when stepping on toes was exactly what she was doing.

She was especially careful in this jurisdiction. Though she ended the Scott Dunn case on good terms with Kate Beckett and Richard Castle, she was also well aware those good terms were enhanced by her being...elsewhere. Now, the 12th precinct was Kate Beckett's house, this was not going to be the old home week she would have preferred. Given that the last two times The pair had directly encountered Tyson had ended badly.

She had been surprised by the invitation to their wedding. Not so much that they had finally given in and gone for it, as she had seen it as inevitable even then, but that they had actually thought to invite her. Her relationship with her own husband and daughter had been strained at the time, and with the workload of her new job on top of it, she had been unable to attend.

She had later been shocked and saddened by the death of Castle's mother and the toll it inflicted upon the man who had helped save her life. She had locked herself in her bathroom and cried in her shower until the water had gone cold and she had been forced to get out. She had wept not only for Richard Castle, but for what his near self destruction had done to the force of nature that was Kate Beckett.

She had had every intention of poaching her from the AG's office at her first opportunity had she taken that job. She would have even sweetened the deal by making room for Castle, as she knew that she was at her best with the mystery writer at her side. Something about their unique pairing worked for them, and even a blind man could see it. But after the devastating blow to the man she loved, Jordan knew there was no chance of her ever leaving New York.

As she approached the door to the building in her FBI windbreaker, a willowy redhead in four inch heels, appeared in the doorway, the gold shield of a detective on her belt and a Sig Sauer P226 on her hip. She was flanked by a dark haired female detective with intense brown eyes, eyes that she could tell had seen way more than a woman her age (a career in law enforcement notwithstanding) should have had to. They were obviously the case primaries, given the badly shielded indignation on their faces as she approached. A look she had seen many times in her career. She had gotten used to it.

"You two the primaries here?" Jordan asked.

"Yeah," Alexis replied, "Detective Alexis Castle, NYPD, Homicide, this is my partner, Detective Rose Freeman."

"Special Agent in Charge Jordan Shaw, FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit." Jordan replied,

"My people will be taking charge of the Tyson manhunt. Normally this would be the Jurisdiction of the US Marshall's service, given that he's an escaped convict, but with his...tendencies, the Attorney General's office decided it was best my unit take point here. The New York Police Commissioner and Your Chief of detective's assured me I could expect your full cooperation."

"My Captain's...dealings with the Commissioner's office has not exactly been what you would call warm and cordial over the years." Alexis scoffed. Her father's recounting of the Eric Vaughn affair...when the Police Commissioner had essentially pimped Kate out to the guy in exchange for funding his own political ambitions.

Kate didn't recall it fondly either, something Alexis herself had discovered the night after the incident when she found her in the upstairs guest bathroom of the loft essentially having a panic attack. She had held Kate herself as the older woman recounted the incident with the sniper and helped her work through it...had sworn never to tell her dad about it. Kate had wanted to keep her dignity intact, and so soon after her own kidnapping, she had understood how important that was.

"The Commissioner had not been happy, when Kate had filed the notice of claim for sexual harassment with his office over the affair. Though she had had no intention of following through, she had allowed him to "talk her out of it" in exchange for some political clout of her own. A political favor Kate had intended to cash in when she went after Senator Bracken before he had been brought down. Alexis later learned that favor had been called in to grease the wheels to allow her transfer to the 12th Precinct and the opportunity she now had to prove she belonged there on her own merits.

"Wait..." Jordan sputtered, "Alexis..._Castle_? Would you by chance be any relation to..."

"Yes, Agent Shaw," Alexis replied, with a sigh, "Richard Castle is my father."

"I see." Jordan replied, already intrigued. She had known Rick Castle had a daughter, just not that she had gone into law enforcement. Her mind was already working up a profile of her, a habit that had become nearly second nature to her over the years.

"Following in your stepmother's footsteps I see." She quipped, a mischievous glint in her eye, sometimes she just couldn't help herself. She didn't miss the tiny flare of indignation in the redhead's eyes...before she concealed it with some dry humor of her own, a deflection technique she ad obviously picked up from her father.

"Though I'm sure dad would have preferred that I follow in his footsteps, I found my own path, not Kate's. I was already pursuing a career in forensic pathology when things...changed." She replied.

"After your grandmother was murdered, you mean." Jordan's mouth supplied, before she could stop herself, "You figured a career as a homicide cop was the next logical step."

She regretted saying it as soon as the words crossed her lips. She didn't miss the the hurt, brokenhearted expression that crossed the redhead's face at her poorly considered words. She had seen that sadness, or one like it in her daughter's eyes, every time she chose a case over her. Kicking herself for causing the fleeting, devastating sadness that darkened her pale blue eyes...before Alexis locked it away by force of will behind ice and steel.

_Definitely picked up a trait or two from Beckett over the years._ Jordan thought to herself.

"I'm sorry, Detective Castle, that was thoughtless of me." Jordan replied, chastened, "I hadn't meant to open old wounds."

"I'm fine" Alexis replied stiffly, blinking a few times, "Dad told me about you when I was a kid. He mentioned you had a habit of profiling people."

"Occupational hazard in my line of work." Jordan quipped quietly, knowing in her heart, that if somebody had done that to her Elizabeth, she would have chewed them a new asshole...and then she would have really put them in the hurt locker.

"Yeah, I guess." Alexis replied, then added, "What about me and my team? We've put in a lot of legwork on case. I would really like to see this through."

"I would really like to keep you and your partner involved in the investigation as much as possible" Jordan stated, professionally. Your Captain has more direct experience with Jerry Tyson than anyone...you're father too, for that matter, I would really like to pick his brain about...oomph"

**"YOU LEAVE MY FATHER OUT OF THIS!"** Alexis nearly screamed at her.

Jordan was completely unprepared to be shoved roughly backwards into her own SUV by a completely enraged Alexis Castle. It was like a switch had been flipped, a coil had been sprung, and the steely self control she had so far exhibited was completely, utterly, gone...replaced by a near lethal rage.

The angry glare Alexis Castle leveled at her, mere inches from her face, inspired real fear in her...and she had stared down some of the most deadly serial killers of the past three decades.

"It has taken nearly a decade for my dad to get his life back...to find himself again...if you drag him back into it...he'll...he'll..try to help...and it could destroy him...I...can't...I _won't_ let you hurt him. Stay away from him. Don't you dare go near him...I mean it."

"Okay...Detective...we'll leave your dad out of it." Jordan replied, her voice more than just a little shaken. _Not unless I absolutely have to... _she managed to keep inside her own head.

"Make sure you do, _Special Agent_, make _absolutely _sure of it." Alexis replied, managing not to voice the words _hurt my dad and I swear I'll kill you_, though the sentiment was readily apparent in her eyes to anyone able to read it...which Jordan was.

A glare that was mirrored in her partner's dark brown eyes as Alexis released her and stalked away.

"Have a nice evening, Special Agent Shaw," Rose Freeman stated coldly, the first words she had spoken in the entire exchange. "I hope we have come to an understanding."

To the departing backs of both detectives, Jordan Shaw whispered, "Yeah...so am I" as she straightened her blouse where Alexis had grabbed it. She understood the younger redhead's desire to protect her father, she shared the same feeling where it pertained to her husband and her daughter so she decided that she would keep this little chat to herself.

Though she also decided in that moment, that if her investigation _did_ require her to eventually speak to Richard Castle about Tyson, she would make sure to _never_ spend any time in an enclosed space alone with either of them.

Her mother did not raise a fool.


	18. Balance of Power

**Chapter Eighteen**  
**Balance of Power**

* * *

_No one knows what it's like  
To be the bad man  
To be the sad man  
Behind blue eyes_

No one knows what it's like  
To be hated  
To be fated  
To telling only lies

But my dreams  
They aren't as empty  
As my conscience seems to be

I have hours, only lonely  
My love is vengeance  
That's never free

_The Who: Behind Blue eyes_

* * *

_Previously:_

"_I would really like to keep you and your partner involved in the investigation as much as possible" Jordan stated, professionally. Your Captain has more direct experience with Jerry Tyson than anyone...you're father too, for that matter, I would really like to pick his brain about...oomph"_

"_YOU LEAVE MY FATHER OUT OF THIS!" Alexis nearly screamed at her._

_Jordan was completely unprepared to be shoved roughly backwards into her own SUV by a completely enraged Alexis Castle. It was like a switch had been flipped, a coil had been sprung, and the steely self control she had so far exhibited was completely, utterly, gone...replaced by a near lethal rage. _

_The angry glare Alexis Castle leveled at her, mere inches from her face, inspired real fear in her...and she had stared down some of the most deadly serial killers of the past three decades._

"_It has taken nearly a decade for my dad to get his life back...to find himself again...if you drag him back into it...he'll...he'll..try to help...and it could destroy him...I...can't...I won't let you hurt him. Stay away from him. Don't you dare go near him...I mean it."_

"_Okay...Detective...we'll leave your dad out of it." Jordan replied, her voice more than just a little shaken. Not unless I absolutely have to... she managed to keep inside her own head._

"_Make sure you do, Special Agent, make absolutely sure of it." Alexis replied, managing not to voice the words _hurt my dad and I swear I'll kill you_, though the sentiment was readily apparent in her eyes to anyone able to read it...which Jordan was. _

_A glare that was mirrored in her partner's dark brown eyes as Alexis released her and stalked away._

"_Have a nice evening, Special Agent Shaw," Rose Freeman stated coldly, the first words she had spoken in the entire exchange. "I hope we have come to an understanding."_

_To the departing backs of both detectives, Jordan Shaw whispered, "Yeah...so am I" as she straightened her blouse where Alexis had grabbed it. She understood the younger redhead's desire to protect her father, she shared the same feeling where it pertained to her husband and her daughter so she decided that she would keep this little chat to herself._

_Though she also decided in that moment, that if her investigation did require her to eventually speak to Richard Castle about Tyson, she would make sure to never spend any time in an enclosed space alone with either of them._

_Her mother did not raise a fool._

* * *

The Following Morning  
7:30 AM

When Detectives Castle and Freeman arrived at the precinct they both figured they were in deep shit. The incident the previous evening with Special Agent Shaw was still fresh on Alexis' mind. When she saw Jordan in Kate's office, and heard the less than cordial exchange between them, she figured she would likely be eating a suspension at best, possibly even federal charges and was fully prepared to fall on her sword to protect Rose's reputation. The only thing Rosie had done was back up her partner.

She was the one who lost her temper and roughed up a Federal Agent. She knew from experience that the FBI didn't take that lightly, having held two at gunpoint. In spite of the fact that they were dirty they still had had friends. She had endured a lot of cold stares and spiteful looks both in court and in the new safe house after the incident. It was one of the reasons she had turned down the offer to join the FBI herself.

"Castle, Freeman...in my office...right now, and close my door after you." Captain Beckett bellowed from her office door, when she noticed they were at their desks. She did NOT sound happy.

A look crossed between them before they rose from their desks and the two of them walked into the Captain's office like they were heading to an execution. As soon as the door closed, which Alexis took as a very bad sign. She had remembered Roy Montgomery, that he always kept his door open, and Kate followed his example. The fact that Kate had told them to close the door was a very bad sign.

"Captain, before we get started, I can explain..." Alexis began, but Kate silenced her with a raised hand.

"Detective Castle, Detective Freeman," Kate began, "Special Agent in Charge Shaw of the BAU has officially taken over jurisdiction of the Jerry Tyson manhunt. She has also put forth a request through the Police Commissioner and the Chief of Detectives that the two of you be temporarily placed under her chain of command for the duration of her investigation. You will be reporting to her, in the field, effective immediately."

Alexis let out a slow sigh of relief, that Agent Shaw had not reported her for misconduct, she certainly could have, if she had wanted to.

"Shall I set up the war room in the same place as before, Kate?" Jordan asked with a sardonic grin.

"I don't see why not, Jordan." Kate replied, as Jordan turned and left the office, motioning her team to take over the conference room, where they had set up for the Dunn case over ten years before. Just like before she had all the state of the art toys. It was time to set them up and get this guy.

Jordan Shaw had known exactly what the young redhead was going to say, reveling in the fact that she had been right about her sense of responsibility. She had half expected her to be more like her father, but she seemed to be a straight shooter.

She had, of course done her homework since last night, having hers and Rose Freeman's files emailed over over and had perused them with great interest. Especially the offer that had been made by the FBI after she had finished testifying against the Irish Mob in Boston. To this end, she had taken the time to call Director Will Sorenson, head of the field office in Boston, and inquire about his impression of her.

He had told her (a few hours too late for her sake, she noted to herself) that she should never press her where her father was concerned, or risk her immediate wrath. She was incredibly protective of him to the exception of all else. Possibly out of guilt for never having visited him while he was in the rehabilitation facility, a matter of record she had looked up as soon as she had learned the extent of Richard Castle's anxiety disorder.

Dragging him into the middle of all this could likely cause the man to spiral even deeper into mental illness from which he might never come out from this time and what he knew about Tyson was likely nearly a decade out of date anyway. She had enough information from his previous kills, his prison record and his current kills to date to draw a profile of her own.

Her people, now including Detectives Freeman and Castle would handle the research, collate the evidence and lead the operations, and the 12th would provide the manpower when it came time to break down doors and canvas the area around each crime scene.

Tyson would be killing again soon, and she had one more person to recruit to her task force. She had heard very good things about a crime scene analyst named Jeremy Christian. He had been analyzing all of the evidence and had worked all of the crime scenes since the new cycle of killings had begun a month ago. His services would be invaluable to bring them up to speed. He was out of the office, he had been going non stop for the last two days and his supervisor had ordered him to take a break. He was not expected back in until the following day. She figured she had plenty of time to pick his brain until tomorrow.

* * *

8:30 PM  
Jessica Sullivan's apartment

Jeremy had just finished posing the body of Jessica Sullivan on her bed in the small Manhattan apartment she lived in alone. She hadn't put up much of a fight, but had seemed resigned to her fate, as the man she had hoped to impress had sent her a dear Jane letter in prison telling her she was sick and he wanted nothing to do with her, followed by a restraining order when she was paroled. She just turned her back and offered her neck like a sacrificial lamb, as if she had wanted to die.

A stark contrast to Delores Jacobs...the crazy homicidal black widow bitch. It was obvious from the décor of bedroom that she had been planning to kill him after fucking his brains out. (the icepick in the bedside table was a dead giveaway) When she had turned to ask him to unzip her dress, giving him the opening to slip the garrote around her neck, she had slammed him backwards bodily into the wall and nearly caused him to lose his grip on the rope. He was sure he would have bruises on his back for weeks.

He had had to talk Alexis into teaching him some martial arts moves and sparring with him later that morning, letting her slam him hard to the mat a few times to establish his alibi. Her tears when she saw the bruises on his shoulder blades that night in bed had nearly torn his heart in two. He hated letting her think she had accidentally injured him, but it had been the only way to cover his tracks. She had spent nearly an hour working the arnica oil into his bruises.

Thankfully he would not have the sort of trouble with tonight. Thankfully there would only be one more 3XK inspired killing and he would be able to put an end to the killings once and for all, and the architect of them as well.

Alexis would be safe, his mother would be in a mental institution where she needed to be to get well, or at least receive care for the rest of her natural life, and he could, hopefully one day get the dreams to stop. He would spend the rest of his natural life seeking to balance the scales for the lives he had taken by bringing murderers to justice. Scales he knew would never truly be balanced while he lived.

He knew he would never be free. Though the world would attribute his crimes to the man known as 3XK, he would be locked away in a prison of his own making until the day he died. Alexis, if she would still have him when this was all over, would never understand the guilt he would carry forever, but it was a burden he would carry. The chains he had forged himself in life, and even death would not release him from.

He would do the worst possible thing to Tyson. See to it that he would be reduced to a mere footnote in history, one even his poor demented mother would hopefully one day forget. He would go out with a whimper...not a bang. If it took him the rest of his life.

* * *

Meanwhile, in Upstate, NY

Jerry Tyson had just gotten off of the phone with Jeremy. Though he wasn't completely enamored with his choice in victims, the boy was moving apace, keeping the timetable that had been set. He certainly could not fault the young man's results. He was certainly leading Kate Beckett and the NYPD a merry chase. He had certainly chosen his disciple well. The boy had spirit and certainly showed a gift for killing. He was entertaining the notion of strangling his mother before he left to take charge of poor Alexis Castle. Leaving the boy as his gift to the world, his murderous, vengeful phoenix...maybe even a successor of sorts. Let his image and his work live on. The idea was beginning to find more and more merit. Taking a page from the book of the Roman Emperor Tiberius had a certain elegance about it that appealed to his ego.

First however he needed to remove the one remaining impediment to his plan. The only other person in New York City with the intuition and knowledge of him who might be able to smell out his plan, Kate Beckett. He had the perfect method in mind, one inspired by his previous failure. He actually chuckled as he dialed a number he had long ago committed to memory. Schooling his voice when the line picked up.

"Richard Castle." the man said on the other end of the line.

"Hello Rick old friend, it's Jerry...Jerry Tyson."

The line was still open, but the other end was completely silent, other than Richard Castle's labored breathing.

"I think there's something your wife and daughter are keeping from you."

* * *

_****Author's note** now things will begin to get interesting...or disturbing...or both...depending on how you look at the story. Things are about to take a much darker turn. Fair warning for those of you who are lovers of fluff...this may not be much fun for you, not much fun at all.**_

_**For those of you choosing to stay the course and see where this leads I thank you for your faith ion my storytelling. More to come soon. I will be beating these next few chapters out as quickly as I can to meet the Castle Ficathon deadline. If I go beyond it...so be it.**_

_**Thanks for reading, thanks for reviewing, thanks for your encouragement on twitter.**_

_**As ever.**_

_**Shutterbug5269**_


	19. Game Changer

**Chapter Nineteen  
****Game Changer**

* * *

_Hey, I'm your life  
I'm the one who takes you there  
Hey, I'm your life  
I'm the one who cares  
They, they betray  
I'm your only true friend now  
They, they'll betray  
I'm forever there_

_I'm your dream, make you real  
I'm your eyes when you must steal  
I'm your pain when you can't feel, _

_sad but true  
I'm your dream, mind astray  
I'm your eyes while you're away  
I'm your pain while you repay  
You know it's sad but true  
_

_Metallica: Sad, But True_

* * *

_Previously_

_Jerry Tyson had just gotten off of the phone with Jeremy. Though he wasn't completely enamored with his choice in victims, the boy was moving apace, keeping the timetable that had been set. He certainly could not fault the young man's results. He was definitely leading Kate Beckett and the NYPD a merry chase. He had really had chosen his disciple well. _

_The boy had spirit and certainly showed a gift for killing. He was entertaining the notion of strangling his mother before he left to take charge of poor Alexis Castle. Leaving the boy as his gift to the world, his murderous, vengeful phoenix...maybe even a successor of sorts. Let his image and his work live on. The idea was beginning to find more and more merit. Taking a page from the book of the Roman Emperor Tiberius had a certain elegance about it that appealed to his ego. _

_First however he needed to remove the one remaining impediment to his plan. The only other person in New York City with the intuition and knowledge of him who might be able to smell out his plan, Kate Beckett. He had the perfect method in mind, one inspired by his previous failure. He actually chuckled as he dialed a number he had long ago committed to memory. Schooling his voice when the line picked up._

"_Richard Castle." the man said on the other end of the line._

"_Hello Rick old friend, it's Jerry...Jerry Tyson."_

_The line was still open, but the other end was completely silent, other than Richard Castle's labored breathing._

"_I think there's something your wife and daughter are keeping from you."_

* * *

"You...it can't be...you're dead..." Richard Castle stammered.

"Oh, come now Rick, I _know_ you never really believed that." Tyson replied, his voice actually jovial, almost giddy from the fear he heard in Richard Castle's voice, the man who had crippled him. "Kate might have, but not you."

Tyson could hear Castle's labored breathing, could hear him start to hyperventilate.

"Get a grip on yourself, Richard," Tyson stated tersely, "No fair fainting on me now. I'm not planning on doing anything to you or her _just_ yet, I merely thought you would like to know from the horse's mouth what's been going on for the past month. That your dear wife and darling progeny have been lying to you, and conspiring to keep things from you. Before I take my revenge upon you, I wanted to level the playing field. Lets keep this sporting shall we?"

"Tyson..." Rick started, but he was cut off by the man himself.

"Lets not make threats we both know you aren't able to keep anymore, shall we Ricky?" Tyson taunted, "I've decided that you're no longer a worthy adversary, Kate isn't either...but that lovely daughter of yours and her partner? I think I'll have a lot of fun playing with them instead."

"KEEP YOUR FILTHY HANDS OFF MY DAUGHTER YOU SON OF A BITCH!" Castle bellowed into the phone, but all he got back was dial tone.

He stood there for several minutes, breathing heavily, deep down knowing he was teetering on the brink of a panic attack, but he kept it at bay as another emotion overcame him.

Rage. Pure, unequivocal, blinding rage.

He yanked the house phone from the wall and threw it across the room, hearing it slam into the shelves in the living room with a resounding crash of metal, plastic and broken glass, leaving his and Kate's framed wedding photo lying face down on the hardwood floor. He upended everything on the kitchen island sending it all crashing onto the floor as well.

Kate and Alexis had lied to him.

Alexis was in danger, firmly in the sights a madman and Kate had smiled in his face and lied to him about it, kept the truth from him for over a month. Even worse, his daughter had been complicit in the lies, in the concealment of the truth. Suddenly her reasoning for asking him about a locksmith who could be trusted made perfect sense.

He had to know what was going on, and there was only one place where he could find out. If he was going to protect the people he loved, if he was going to stop Tyson he needed all of the information on hand thus far, he needed to go to the precinct. Find out just how deep the lies went.

He grabbed his coat, his cell phone, and Kate's old backup piece from the safe in his office and headed out the door.

Sergei and Ekaterina met him coming out of the elevator.

"Mr. Castle," Sergei asked in that thick Muskovite accent of his, "are you headed out for morning? Shall I call town car?"

"Sergei, how many times have I asked you to call me Rick?" Castle replied, masking his anger and determination with a familiar question.

"I believe current count now eight hundred thirty six, Mr Castle." came the lighthearted reply.

"I am on my way to meet Kate for lunch, have the man downstairs bring up the Ferrari, I'd like to go in style." Castle lied.

"Of course, Mr. Castle." Sergei replied.

He wasn't sure what was going on with the man, but he knew Mr. Castle was concealing something. He would play along, but he had long ago "low jacked" all of the Castle vehicles kept in the building, including Mrs. Castle's pursuit car and Harley soft tail. He had even taken the liberty of having Ekaterina place tracking devices in Alexis Castle's pursuit car, the sporty little Alfa Romeo she drove when off duty, and the Vespa she had bought the summer after her first semester of college.

His past as a GEU operative notwithstanding, Sergei was loathe to pry too deeply into his charges personal lives, but he was nothing if not thorough. Even if he or one of his men didn't ride with one of the Castles, he would be able to pinpoint any one of their vehicles to within 10 meters. With the lipstick cameras trained on and tightly focused solely on the driver's seat, (for privacy purposes) and GPS console, in an emergency he would also know who was driving and where the car was going.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Kate had pulled into the parking garage and walked to the elevator, so intent on her trip from her car to the elevator that she hadn't noticed that the Ferrari was not in the parking space where it resided unless it was out for maintenance. She rode the elevator up to the loft and exited.

It wasn't until she unlocked and opened their front door that she knew something was wrong. The living room looked like a tornado had gone through it. The kitchen looked little better. Even worse, the loft was dead silent and there was no sign of Rick.

"RICK!" she shouted at the top of her lungs, but there was no answer

Kate immediately went into panic mode. She tried his study and the bedroom and their accompanying closets with now, shouting his name with increasing amounts of panic in her voice.

"RICK!" but still no answer.

She tried every room in the loft, but he was nowhere to be found.

She ran back down the stairs after searching every room, bathroom, and closet with no success. She had by this time shouted herself nearly hoarse when she headed for the land line phone, but not finding it in its usual place near the piano. It wasn't until she turned to sweep the room looking for it, that the found it sitting upside down near a face down picture frame. When she picked it up, she noted that it was their wedding photo...the glass cracked and spider webbed out from the center of her wedding dress.

She took out her cell phone and called the desk downstairs and asked where Rick was. When Sergei answered, asking why he wasn't with her that the panic rose to new levels.

Rick had gone out alone in the Ferrari and lied about where he was going.

Sergei's next words sent her heart plunging in her chest.

"Mrs, Castle...I have found his car. It is parked at the 12th Precinct station house."

"No..." she whispered to herself, "oh, dear God...no"

* * *

When she arrived at the precinct, the desk officer told her he had let him go upstairs to the homicide squad room. He had never met Rick, having just transferred in a month ago so had no idea why the Captain's husband should be prevented from going upstairs or that the Captain or Detective Castle should be contacted if he found his way there.

As Kate bypassed the elevators and made a bee line for the stairs, the desk sergeant, Ernesto Montoya cuffed him on the back of the head and gave him a stern look before looking past the man to the door she had just disappeared through, with a muttered "Rookies."

He had been a rookie cop, on one of his first call outs the night Martha Rodgers had been stabbed, he had been with LT securing the scene when Beckett had led her husband out of the alley that night. Had been one of the first to remove his hat as the two passed by. He had also been here the day he had his first breakdown when he had tried to come to the precinct to surprise his wife. It hadn't gone well.

When Kate reached the homicide Squad room the first thing she saw was Rick. Standing in the one place she had hoped he would never see, the electronic murder board, with the Tyson file pulled up and the pending caseload. Including the crime scene for murder number two for the current cycle.

He had obviously come straight here and gone right to it. For a split second as she approached him from behind and watched him staring intently at the board, he looked almost the way he had a decade ago. The intensity with which he studied the available clues, everything found at the scene, she could tell that the wheels were turning.

It was only when he turned full around at the sound of her heels softly clacking behind him did she notice the difference. The manic glaze of his eyes, the rage and fear emanating off of him in waves at the horrors that were torturing his mind. The hundred yard stare as he seemed to glare right through her.

"You lied to me." he whispered hoarsely. "My little girl...that madman...my little girl is hunting that madman and you hid it from me...you...lied about it...smiled in my face...and lied to me."

"Castle...Rick...please...I..." Kate whispered..tears welling in her eyes as she reached for his arm.

"GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!" he screamed at her as he charged past her...pushing her bodily out of his way, slamming her into the wall as he moved for the door. "DON'T TOUCH ME!"

Kate bounced off the wall and fell to her knees, trying to get up, but the heel of her right shoe had snapped off when she fell, twisting her ankle and she tumbled to the floor again.

Ryan, having seen her go down from the elevator, charged in, not realizing whom he was facing, until Rick was almost on top of him. All six foot two one hundred eighty five pounds of crazed Rick Castle bulldozed Ryan aside like a rag doll, sending the man sprawling as he made for the elevator. Two uniforms, having seen the Lieutenant go down, moved from opposite corners of the room to intercept him, one of whom reached for his Taser.

"NO!" Kate screamed an instant too late, as the officer took aim and fired the electrodes into the muscles of her husband's left hip and sent 50,000 volts coursing through him, bringing him down, to collapse in a heap to the floor. Ryan got up and slapped the taser out of the officer's hand, as the other officer moved to cuff Rick. Searching him and finding her old backup piece tucked into his waistband, the safety off.

"Please...don't hurt him..." Kate practically begged in a hoarse whisper, her eyes brimming over with tears, having kicked off her ruined boots and risen shakily from the floor. The officer cuffed Rick's hands in front of him, in deference to the captains wishes.

Kate limped into her office and put on the flats she kept in her desk as the bus was called, then several minutes later, she looked on mournfully as he was secured to the gurney by the paramedics as she limped behind them into the elevator. He was silent...almost catatonic, staring straight up into the air, but she could tell from his unfocused eyes that he was still enraged. Still angry...at her...at Alexis...at the world. Kate felt like her whole world had shattered along with her heart which was broken in two.

* * *

Due to his celebrity status, they admitted him to the occupational therapy wing of Presbyterian Hospital in a private room with a psych consult and two armed security guards at the door.

Kate sat down in the chair next to his bed, after having her badly twisted ankle checked out and treated. She had not been the most cooperative of patients, but it had been the only way to get the doctors to let her into her husband's room. When she tried to take his hand, however he jerked it out of her grip as if burned and turned away, refusing to look at her, not speaking a single word.

"What have I done?" Kate whispered to herself as she pulled her legs up and rested her head on her knees slowly rocking back and forth as the tears fell down her cheeks ruining her makeup and mascara, "Dear God what have I done?"

She knew that he was both powerfully angry at her and Alexis, but was also teetering on the brink of a massive panic attack. Alexis and Kevin would have to deal with Jerry Tyson...her place was here, and she would not leave him, not forsake him. She had made a vow, nearly as sacred as the ones she made when they had gotten married. _Love...honor...cherish, till death do us part._

Even if he never spoke another word to her again.

* * *

"_You lied to me." Rick whispered hoarsely. "My little girl...that madman...my little girl is hunting that madman and you hid it from me...you...lied about it...smiled in my face...and lied to me."_

"_Castle...Rick...please...I..." Kate whispered..tears welling in her eyes as she reached for his arm._

"_GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!" he screamed at her as he charged past her...pushing her bodily out of his way, slamming her into the wall as he moved for the door. "DON'T TOUCH ME!"_

_Kate bounced off the wall and fell to her knees, trying to get up, but the heel of her right shoe had snapped off when she fell, twisting her ankle and she tumbled to the floor again... _

Jerry Tyson paused the recording at the point where Kate had fallen to her knees. This was his fourth viewing and he had not laughed so hard in his entire life as he had upon viewing the feed from the 12 Precinct squad room. Rick must have been farther gone than he had thought...to have screamed at Kate like that...pushed her into a wall...oh he would definitely be keeping this recording. Watching it was never going to get old. When the officer had tased him...the look on Kate's face when he went down...he had never been so well entertained.

Kate had been taken out of the game and by the time they let Rick out of the hospital, his daughter would be dead. He would violate her in every way possible, every way his angry tormented vengeful mind could come up with. It would likely take days. Maybe he would actually make Jeremy watch as she begged him to end her torment, send the boy completely over the edge. His victory would soon be complete.

It was only a matter of time.

* * *

**Author's note** Yup...I have done it. Rick and Kate have been effectively been taken out of play. They will not be riding to Alexis' rescue, or coming up with a pluck way to save the day. This story is taking a darker turn.

Hope you guys can stand it and bear with me.

As ever,

Shutterbug5269


	20. Ready For The Storm

**Chapter Twenty  
****The Calm Before The Storm**

* * *

_Oh give me mercy for my dreams  
'Cause every confrontation seems to tell me  
What it really means  
To be this lonely sailor  
And when the sky begins to clear  
The sun it melts away my fear  
And I shed a silent weary tear  
For those who mean to love me  
Oh I am ready for the storm  
Yes sir ready  
I am ready for the storm  
I'm ready for the storm_

_Rich Mullins: Ready For The Storm_

* * *

_Previously_

_Jerry Tyson paused the recording at the point where Kate had fallen to her knees. This was his fourth viewing and he had not laughed so hard in his entire life as he had upon viewing the feed from the 12th Precinct squad room. Rick must have been farther gone than he had thought...to have screamed at Kate like that...pushed her into a wall...oh he would definitely be keeping this recording. Watching it was never going to get old. When the officer had tased him...the look on Kate's face when he went down...he had never been so fully entertained. _

_Kate had been taken out of the game and by the time they let Rick out of the hospital, his daughter would be dead. He would violate her in every way possible, every way his angry tormented vengeful mind could come up with. It would likely take days. Maybe he would actually make Jeremy watch as she begged him to end her torment, send the boy completely over the edge. His victory would soon be complete._

_It was only a matter of time._

* * *

Presbyterian Hospital  
Occupational Therapy Wing

In his restless, fitful, drug addled sleep, Richard Castle's mind kept working...the doctors had given him something mild to keep him docile, but it wasn't quite strong enough. His subconscious refused to turn off. He had to know the whole story...see past the lies...see past the manipulations...he had to find the truth.

She had lied to him, after all these years...looked him right in the face and lied to him. She hadn't done that since her trip to D.C. all those years ago. Yet she had done it so easily...so effortlessly.

Kate had lied to him...

Alexis had lied to him...

Secrets and lies...secrets and lies...and Tyson...all over again.

In Richard Castle's fevered, angry, manic brain, the pieces were falling together. The chain of events to make everything make sense. Something about the method of the killings...the most recent choice of victims...something was off. Something was wrong with this picture. It was too neat...too easy. Something just didn't fit.

Tyson's original M.O. was spot on...flawless in it's execution. The women strangled in their own homes, seemingly under the noses of other tenants and security cameras. The type of rope...the ligature marks the funeral poses...the blonde victims...all perfect...even the things left out of the media...perfect in every detail.

All the elements were perfectly rendered...meticulous...down to the smallest detail...perfect...too perfect...the attention to detail...like a memorized script...like following an instruction manual...a cheat sheet...a checklist...no variation on the theme...but, it seemed...cold...lifeless...no actual flair...no real enjoyment or rage...or hatred... just passionless meticulous execution. That was it! Of course!

Tyson isn't the killer!

It is him...but it isn't him. He's involved but not directly...just like before...like the first time he had encountered the son of a bitch, he has an accomplice...a proxy. It was why Tyson had never been seen, why he had been a ghost up until now...because he was never here just like when he had tormented Ryan...like he was waiting for something. A certain sequence of events to take place before putting in an appearance...a curtain call...an endgame.

But why now? Why take so long to start up again? Why wait over a decade? He had come up with a much more meticulous plot in a lot less time...before...one that very nearly worked if not for his own hubris...his need to gloat. To lord it over him.

Of course! Marcus Gates...Marcus Gates had been too sloppy...had gotten him found out in the end because of his lack of attention to detail...which had cost Tyson his anonymity...he would need time...time to groom a more suitable proxy...somebody more meticulous...somebody who could move at will...because the profile screamed Tyson. This was just like with the Tisdale case, the one that started it all. Everyone would miss the forest for the trees, see only what Tyson wanted them to see...until it was too late.

Why do this? Why use a proxy like before? Something Tyson said...about playing the game with...Alexis...Oh god...this wasn't about the murders at all...not really. The murders...are a smokescreen! Just like framing him had been all those years ago. A ruse for his true motivation...his real reason for doing this...just like before..only now, his motivation was revenge. Revenge against him and Kate for ruining his plans. Why would he mention Alexis? Why bring her into this? Unless...

Alexis was his target!

He had to warn them...warn Kate...Had to protect Alexis...protect the people he loves...He...had to...wake up...but he was soooo sleepy...an unfamiliar face followed by a pinprick and he was fading...something was dragging him down...pulling him under...NO! Not now! Not when he knew what was really going on! He...had to...wake up...had to...had to...but...so...tired...so...very...sleepy.

After the nurse had upped the dosage of the sedatives, Richard Castle could no longer resist the pull of the shadows dragging him under. His writer's mind finally succumbed to the darkness of a dreamless sleep. He had found the answer.

Only he had found it too late. A single tear sliding down his cheek as he slid into oblivion.

* * *

The following morning

Kate hadn't left Rick's side since her ankle had been treated...hadn't so much as glanced at her father's watch since she had slid into the chair next to his bed. Time had lost all meaning. She saw only him. She had watched him crumble again right in front of her eyes. Exactly as she had always feared. She had lied to him, kept the Tyson investigation hidden from him...all for nothing. She had played right into Tyson's, hands played the role he wanted her to nearly to perfection.

The doctors who treated him had tried to get her to go home. To rest, tried to tell her that visiting hours were over, but she was stubborn and immovable. She was his wife, his emergency contact and his health care proxy. She had power of attorney, everything she needed to tie the hands of the hospital's administration. Not for lack of trying on the part of the hospital staff. Nearly every nurse who had come in had tried to "reason" with her while they checked his vitals, changed the IV bag of his anti anxiety meds and anesthesia keeping him just under so he couldn't try to get up and hurt himself. All because of what she had done.

Once the suicide watch and psych hold were lifted in a couple days, she would be able get him out of this ward and into a private hospital room. He hadn't meant to hurt anybody...hadn't set out to be violent. He had just needed to get out of the squad room. His combined hatred and fear of Jerry Tyson mixed with his anger at hers and Alexis' lies had slammed full force into his anxiety disorder when he had gone to the precinct.

She had no idea how long he had stared at the murder board and confirmed that Tyson was back and operating with near impunity. Five minutes? Ten maybe? But she knew he was a speed reader, so he likely managed to get through it all. Managed to chart the course of the lies both herself and Alexis had told. Kevin, the only other person who had been wounded by Tyson as much as she and Rick had been, had tried to warn her that lying to him about it would be a bad idea. But she had rebuffed him, sadly he had been right. His finding out this way had made it ten times worse.

CSU had pulled the recordings from the house phone. Tyson had indeed called the house, likely using a cheap prepaid cell, the number was blocked at the source, but his voice had been recorded clear as day. She had had a feeling that he would try something like that, hence the wiretap.

She had hoped she could have been home to intercept the call. Though it certainly explained the presence of her backup piece in the waistband of his pants. The bastard had known exactly what buttons to push to send Rick into a tailspin. She would call Jordan, have her put a detail on Alexis and Rose...just to be safe.

Rick had been muttering in his sleep all last night about secrets and lies. About manipulations and conspiracies and plots and it was tearing her heart to pieces. Listening to his anguish, to his heartache. Heartache she had caused by lying to him, by hiding things from him...again. By how easily she had slipped back into concealing things from him when it suited her.

Interspersed in his mutterings had been a smattering of case related details...as if his subconscious was working the case...trying to figure it out, make all of the pieces fit. In spite of herself, it made her smile through her tears. Castle was still in there...somewhere...still trying to find the chain of events to make the story make sense.

All from ten minutes or less of staring at the murder board in the throes of a manic episode.

The doctors had decided to keep him under until the new drugs kicked in, but when they took him off sedation, she would have to ask him if he had figured anything out...maybe try to get him to build theory with her like the old days...provided, of course she could get him to forgive her. Get him to talk to her at all.

Her frantic call to Alexis last night had gone straight to voice mail. She always turned off her ringer when Jeremy stayed over, but she had called back first thing this morning, worried about her dad. She told Alexis he had been sedated, and would likely be neither awake nor lucid for the next twenty four to forty eight hours. That she was coming anyway to see for herself was a testament to her devotion to her dad. Kate knew how much she hated seeing him in these settings.

Though Alexis firmly and strenuously denies it to this very day, Kate knows it was the real reason why she had accepted the undercover assignment in Boston. Something she has been bitterly ashamed of to the point of blocking it out for years. That she couldn't face up to the reality of her father being locked away for treatment in a "rehab clinic." (a clever euphemism for an asylum) A reality she simply couldn't face, so she ran and hid. Buried herself in a job and almost didn't come out. Kate knew the feeling well.

Her own past sins had come home to roost, to be visited on Castle's daughter.

"Daddy!"

Alexis had stopped and burst into tears as soon as she had entered the cold, sterile hospital room and saw her father lying sedated in the bed, and IV sticking in his arm. Suddenly the steely eyed, hardened Homicide Detective was gone, replaced with the little girl Kate remembered when she first met her. The little girl who loved her daddy, her knight in shining armor...her entire world...lying sedated in a sterile white room. Her deepest fear...her greatest source of dread right in front of her eyes.

Alexis clutched her father's warm but sedative slackened hand. He was no longer awake or aware enough to react, and Kate wondered if he had been awake if he would have pulled away from her too. Some part of her mind reminded her that he was angry at both of them for the lies they had told.

"I found him in the precinct, Alexis. He was so angry...Tyson had called the loft to taunt him...to torture him. Told him he didn't want to play him and I anymore. That he was gonna play with you and Rose now." Kate whispered hoarsely...the horror apparent in her voice.

Horror mixed with shame for her lies and for her part in playing right into whatever sick game Tyson was now running. A game that now included Alexis and Rose.

Alexis was still sobbing over her father's bedside when she saw Kate coming back from the hallway, having stepped out to make a phone call and give her some privacy. Noticed the flats she was wearing and the limp as she walked in the door.

"Oh my God, Kate...he...dad didn't..." Alexis moaned, concerned that her father had hurt her.

"No, Alexis...not on purpose," Kate replied, tears sliding down her own cheeks, "he was in the early stages of a panic attack and was just trying to get out of there...he...pushed me...out of his way and the heel of my shoe snapped on my way down...must have turned my ankle."

"If you were down, how did stop him?" Alexis breathed.

"After...after he steamrolled past Ryan...after...Officer Johnson...he...he..._tased_...him." Kate blurted out, barely keeping her emotions in check.

Alexis locked eyes with her...horrified. She had been tased, it was a requirement to be certified to carry a Taser as a uniform. She knew exactly what it felt like for her father when the electrodes hooked his clothing and the charge surged through him. That knowledge caused her to burst into tears again.

She placed a kiss on her father's forehead and turned to flee. Before she reached the door, Kate grabbed her shoulder. "I'm putting a detail on you and Rose. Tyson made threats. As your Captain, I can't ignore that."

Alexis nodded and turned to flee the hospital room. Unable to stand the sight of her father in this place one more minute. Kate knew that she would not come back until Rick woke up. She knew why and she understood it. She would have Rick in a private hospital room by then to make it easier for her.

Jeremy Christian contemplated what this last murder would mean. Jerry's plan would be coming to is conclusion. He would have to find a way to get Alexis out of her apartment and past the detail placed on her. There would be a single car on each entrance to the building, front and back. He already had the means of incapacitation, a double dose of the pain medication she had been given for her cracked ribs. He knew just how much to give her to not cause her permanent damage.

He had made a point of spending last night with her. They had gone out to dinner after they had gotten out of the precinct then returned to her place and had spent the night making love. She had been happy to see him that night. He had been very attentive and he wanted to catalog everything he loved about her. Everything about how if felt to have her be in love with him.

In the next few days, if he survived this, he was quite sure she would never again want anything to do with him. To be honest, he couldn't blame her.

He was resigned to his fate.

Jerry sat in his office in the farmhouse. It was very nearly time. As soon as he had confirmation of the final murder, he would pack his bag and wait for the text message from Jeremy, then get on the train in Rensselaer and go to New York. He already had the perfect place in mind to finish this.

Kate was out of play. She would be chained to Castle's bedside, Ryan would be bogged down at the precinct. The feds would be hunting a ghost, exactly as he had foreseen. He would have been more concerned about the US Marshall's service. But this Jordan Shaw was a serial killer profiler.

Jeremy had gotten him a copy of the Scott Dunn file. He knew that Shaw could be led down the garden path...she had been by a lesser man than himself. She would see the killings and his profile would be all that she would see. By the time she figured everything out he would be gone, his work would be done. She would preside over Richard Castle's total destruction, and by default, Kate Beckett. Perhaps he would leave Jeremy alive...let her chase him for a while.

Everything was going according to plan.


	21. Dark Homecoming

**Chapter Twenty One**  
**Dark Homecoming**

* * *

_You_  
_You're my mask_  
_You're my cover, my shelter_  
_You_  
_You're my mask_  
_You're the one who's blamed_  
_Do_  
_Do my work_  
_Do my dirty work, scapegoat_  
_Do_  
_Do my deeds_  
_For you're the one who's shamed_

_Metallica: Sad But True_

* * *

_Previously_

_Jerry Tyson sat in his office in the farmhouse. It was very nearly time. As soon as he had confirmation of the final murder, he would pack his bag and wait for the text message from Jeremy, then get on the train in Rensselaer and go back to New York. He already had the perfect place in mind to finish this. _

_Kate Beckett was out of play. She would be chained to Richard Castle's bedside, Ryan would be bogged down at the precinct. The feds would be hunting a ghost, exactly as he had foreseen. He would have been more concerned about the US Marshall's service. But this Jordan Shaw was a serial killer profiler. _

_Jeremy had gotten him a copy of the Scott Dunn file. He knew that Shaw could be led down the garden path...she had been by a lesser man than himself. She would see the killings and his profile would be all that she would see. By the time she figured everything out he would be gone, his work would be done. She would preside over Richard Castle's total destruction, and by default, Kate Beckett. Perhaps he would leave Jeremy alive...let her chase him for a while. _

_Everything was going according to plan._

* * *

Jeremy Christian gathered up the items he would need tonight. The garrote of green and white rope, the same gloves he used at work, the nondescript clothing, the hand-held directional EMP device he had designed to cut the security cameras.

It was time to make the last step in his fifteen year quest to free his mother from the clutches of Jerry Tyson. He had picked up other objectives, other priorities, in many ways a whole new mission in life.

These were the last two murders he would ever commit. The last would be Jerry Tyson. Never again would he take a life in cold blood. He would finish this soon, and everything would be laid at Tyson's feet. Exactly as Tyson himself had planned them to be. They would stop with his death. No one would ever think twice about it. No prints at any of the crime scenes, not enough DNA or fiber evidence at said scenes to point anywhere else but to the man who set it up and everybody believed did it. Tyson had taught him well...perhaps a little too well.

Tyson knew he wasn't going to be able to keep killing and wanted to go out leaving a reign of terror in his wake...go out with a bang instead of a whimper...on top of what he had planned for the Castles. He wanted to go out feared by the City of New York...he wanted to destroy Alexis' father and stepmother by hurting her.

Unlike his own father who had abandoned them shortly after he was born, and his stepfather, Jerry, they were good people, and having gotten to know them, he knew they didn't deserve the pain that had been heaped upon him by Jerry Tyson. He saw the sadness that would always creep into Alexis' beautiful blue eyes whenever the topic of her father came up...the guilt she carried around for not being there for him. Her family had been through so much...some of which they never spoke of, but was there all the same.

No more. Alexis' family had suffered enough. He would finish this so that Jerry Tyson could never harm them, or anyone else ever again, before he could hurt Alexis. He only hoped that someday... somehow...he would be able to atone for all of the evil things he had done to get this far. Some way to balance the scales. But first he had an unpleasant duty to perform.

A mercy killing.

* * *

Two Hours Later  
Melody Parker's Apartment

Jeremy knocked on Melody Parker's door at ten o'clock that night. She had been expecting him, much like the other two had. Melody, however was the most weak-willed of the three. She was every bit as much a doormat as his mother had been to Tyson. She had had a child, he was nearly ten years old, but he was in the system, and if Melody ever got custody back...she had already killed for a man and thought nothing about her child when she did it. Some other child could end up like he did.

She thought he was coming here for sexual favors. She was desperate to not have her parole violated, so she just agreed to lie back open her legs and let him take what he wanted. Unbeknownst to her, sex was not his objective. He was here to put her out of her misery. There were dark times when he wished somebody had done that with his mother. It would have spared him a lot of misery.

When she opened the door and let him inside, he was mildly surprised that, unlike the other two, she had actually dressed up as if going out for the evening. Sexy, but not dressed like a hooker. When he was little, he remembered having seen his mother dress like that every time she had taken the train to Ossining to visit "Jerry." He had later seen her dress that same way every time Jerry decided that his masculine needs had to be met. On those occasions he made a point of putting on his noise canceling headphones and playing Metallica very loud so as not to hear his mother's high pitched screams from downstairs.

Every time she had been allowed out of her basement prison to go outside, his mother was expected to dress for the occasion. His mother may have allowed herself to be reduced to Jerry Tyson's whore over the years, but the man obviously had standards of dress he required of her. The one time, early on after Jerry had moved in, she had worn something he perceived as a little _too_ slutty and he had backhanded her, cut the outfit off of her with a knife and locked her in her room naked. In January.

"Hello Mr. Richards," she said with a meek smile as she bid him come inside, "am I dressed to your liking?" she performed a slow twirl to give him the full effect. He had to admit she was pretty in a mousy sort of way, and she definitely cleaned up nicely. Upon reflection, he could not find any real contempt for Melody, only a wave of intense pity.

_One day, her son might have cause to thank me for this. _he thought to himself. _He has a better shot at a normal life in the system, such as it is._

"Yes, Melody," Jeremy replied, "you clean up very well, but this is not a social call, as you are aware."

"Yes," Melody said quietly, "I understand. How do you want me?"

"Why don't we go to your bedroom, Melody. I may expect you to meet my...ah...needs...but I am neither cruel, nor a monster." Jeremy said, not believing a word he just said. He knew for a fact he had been forced to become both, several times over, and he hated himself for it.

Melody started to reach for the zipper to open her dress, but Jeremy stopped her with a raised hand. She flinched a little at the sudden movement of his hand, clearly accustomed to a certain level of physical abuse.

"Not yet, Melody. I wish to uncover you myself."

Melody nodded, and waited for him to tell her what to do.

"Go sit on your bed, facing away from me." Jeremy told her, and she complied immediately without saying a word.

He walked up to the bed, put on his polypropylene gloves and slipped the plastic bag holding the section of green and white rope out of his pocket and opened it. He was nearly overwhelmed by a wave of sudden melancholy he had not been prepared for, prompting him to offer the one tender mercy he had not offered any of the others as he walked up behind her on the bed.

"Close your eyes, Melody," He whispered, "I'm sorry, this will all be over very soon."

He slipped the rope around her neck and pulled it taught, tightening the rope to cut off her windpipe as she struggled, kicked and fought to breathe...then finally went still. He pulled her back on the bed and arranged her body like the others. He took more care this time, however, demurely smoothing out her clothes, straightening up her hair, even neatly putting her shoes back on. He honestly felt sorry for the pitiful creature the world once knew as Melody Parker.

She reminded him of his mother.

* * *

Presbyterian Hospital  
9:00 PM

Kate sat at Rick's bedside like she had been since he had first been brought here. The doctors were still keeping Rick sedated. At least he was sleeping on his back so she could hold his hand. He was quiet most of the time...almost peaceful in his drug induced sleep, but when the time to renew the meds came, he would struggle toward consciousness...not quite making it, but he would still ramble incoherently in his sleep. Some names she recognized...some she did not. It all came out sounding like gibberish, and his ramblings completely stopped when his dosage was renewed.

Kate could help but wonder if Rick had been on to something in the precinct before the panic attack happened. That he was working something out in his mind before they completely sedated him. He had only been on a minimal dosage to keep him docile and manageable.

She wished she had been honest with him from the beginning, maybe allowed him access to the evidence and see what he could deduce from it from home. Allowed him to feel like he was contributing from the safety of the loft. In her desire to prevent this, very circumstance, she had played right into Tyson's hands and given him the ammunition he used to hurt Rick. To put him here.

_I guess now I will never know, will I? _Kate mused darkly to herself. The guilt for her part in this tearing her up inside. She had shed so many tears since she arrived that she had long since given up on fixing her makeup and washed it all off in the small en-suite bathroom. She was not on happy terms with the haggard, depressed, middle aged woman looking back at her in the mirror, either.

* * *

Jeremy Christian's Midtown apartment  
The following evening.

When Jeremy had gotten home from working the Melody Parker crime scene he made a single text message from a prepaid cell phone. One of seven he had brought with him for this very purpose. Each one used only once...before and after each killing. They were each disassembled after use and the SIM cards destroyed.

_**Finished all the repairs  
**__**on my "to do" list.**_

Within five minutes he got a response.

_**What about the AC?**_

He replied to the message nearly immediately

_**The AC will be fixed tomorrow  
**__**w**__**aiting on parts**_

The last message from Tyson read.

_**Good, I need a working AC  
**__**before**__** my next road trip**_

Jeremy knew that the protective detail would be taken off of Alexis and Rose shortly. "Tyson" had finished his cycle. He might not appear again for months or years. They would be following the standard "higher functioning" serial killer pattern of behavior. Tyson would go to ground for another decade, or maybe kill someplace else. Maybe come back in a year or two if his pattern holds. Agent Shaw and her team had already packed up their war room and were in the process of returning to DC.

He would be spending the night with Alexis. He had a plan that involved a bit of set dressing, a bit of theater...and sadly...he needed Alexis as bait. He would drug her and have her waiting for Jerry, but he would not let him do to her what he had in mind.

He didn't like it. Early on in their relationship, after waking up from a nightmare screaming, she had told him about her kidnapping when she was in college. That she had been drugged and woke up in a strange place, which had turned out to be Paris, France. He wished there was another way, but there wasn't, so he would do his best to keep her trauma to an absolute minimum.

To put her under, he would use the sleeping pills that she had been prescribed after her psych eval, but nearly never used, simply increase the dosage by half. A woman as slight her should be unconscious for nearly two hours. He would deal with Tyson and Alexis would be none the wiser. The first face she saw when she woke would be his.

* * *

12th Precinct Homicide Squad room.

Alexis knew, as she gathered her notes and files on the Tyson Case, that he was likely already long gone. He had rolled the dice and won. There just hadn't been enough evidence to find him. He had left nothing behind. Not even a glimpse in a security camera. He had been like a goddamn ghost.

Every camera on at every crime scene had a half hour gap in their coverage at exactly the time of the night the murders were known to have taken place. The security tapes had not been tampered or altered, the cameras had simply recorded _nothing_ for the time in question other than their time stamps in the recorder. He had obviously gotten possession of a device to wipe out cameras at the scene.

This must have driven Kate and her father crazy back in the day. That he could just appear and disappear apparently at will.

She dutifully typed up her reports and sent them to 1PP. All the i's were dotted and all of the t's were crossed. Her protective detail had signed off an hour ago. To let off steam, and to celebrate her newly recovered freedom she and Jeremy had a dinner date at Remy's. It wasn't Le Cirque, but it was classy and low key. Not to mention the food and the shakes were to die for. After that they were going back to her place for some stress relief of a much more intimate and personal nature.

She would visit her dad when he had been taken off sedation and had been moved to a regular hospital suite. She had her reasons for not wanting to visit her father in the occupational therapy wing. Kate didn't like her reasons for not wanting to see him in a place like that. But she understood them.

It wasn't that she loved her father any less, and Kate knew that too. It was just seeing him in that place. Seeing him being treated like he was crazy or dangerous to himself and others, kept sedated reminded her far too much of that awful rehab facility, and she couldn't deal. She hated that she couldn't, loathed herself for not being at her daddy's side and standing by Kate when they needed her, but she just couldn't. She would be so freaked out that she wouldn't do any good for any of them.

So she would go out to dinner at Remy's with Jeremy, bring him home with her and take him to her bed. Jeremy, with his toned athletic body and his talented hands would help her forget for a few hours what an awful, terrible, selfish person she was for abandoning her family when they needed her. Simply because she couldn't stand seeing her father in the cold, sterile white rooms of the psych ward.

She just...couldn't.

* * *

Alexis Castle's apartment  
9:45 PM

Alexis hadn't thought she was this tired. After they had finished dinner, at Remy's they paid the check and took a cab back to her place. Jeremy had bought her a strawberry shake to go for her to drink as he drover her home in her car. She had begun to feel really tired shortly after finishing it.

_The lack of sleep this past week, working the Jerry Tyson manhunt must have take more out of me than I thought._ She thought to herself, as she leaned on him in the elevator nearly all of the way up.

They had barely gotten into the apartment when the room began spinning and Jeremy had her lie down on the couch. She was unconscious within minutes.

With a heavy heart, he divested her of her sidearms, her shield, her tablet and her cell phone. The last of which he removed the battery from and placed in his own jacket pocket. All of the devices by which he might also be tracked, he also left in her apartment. It was why he had to bring her here first. If they had been left in her car at Remy's it would look odd when the tracking system did its hourly sweep and found her to be in the Remy's parking lot after normal business hours.

When it pinged and they were here, in their charger where they belonged there would be no trail to follow, and nobody would think twice about his being here. No one would miss either of them until they didn't show up for work on Monday.

Hopefully by then, Tyson would be dead, and she would be back here safe and sound. Or they would both be back at the precinct giving a statement about being abducted by Jerry Tyson, and their "miraculous survival" and quick thinking having killed their captor to escape. He was fine either way.

He wiped out every camera on this floor, and the elevator and carried Alexis to car he had appropriated from impound, slipping her carefully into the back seat and covering her with a blanket.

As he slipped into the driver's seat he sent a message to Tyson, whom he was sure would already be on the train from Rensselaer most likely halfway here already.

_**picked up parts for AC  
**__**will meet you on-site to  
**__**make repair**_

He got a nearly immediate response from Jerry.

_**Outstanding.  
**__**Can't wait to fix AC**_

* * *

Warehouse District  
Twenty minutes later

Jeremy arrived at the address Jerry had given him and removed the wheelchair from the trunk, unfolded it and carefully slipped Alexis from the backseat of the car and deposited her into it to wheel her into the warehouse where Tyson had instructed him to take Alexis when the time came. He left her cell phone in the glove compartment.

If he had read the files correctly about this address, it was the same one Jerry had used to stockpile all of the evidence needed to clear Richard Castle as part of his original revenge scheme back in the fall of 2012. He had been curious all of this time, why a man who was such a meticulous planner would make the critical mistake of using a building that had already been tied to him. A building someone was bound to check out eventually.

He hadn't quite gotten his bearings in the structure, before he heard a man clear his throat. When he turned around to see who it was, he felt the sharp bite of taser electrodes digging into his clothes. The last thing he saw was Jerry Tyson as he pulled the trigger.

Then he saw only shadows.

* * *

**_*Author's note** One more chapter to go followed by the epilogue. I apologize for the cliffhanger, but the idea of Jerry double crossing Jeremy was too good to pass up. __All shall be revealed in the gripping conclusion of this tale in the next chapter. Thanks to all of my regulars and not-so-regulars for sticking with me on this really dark outing. One of my darkest this far. In spite of the fact that Rick and Kate don't get to save the day and the lack of a Caskett baby._**

**_I will try to provide stuff like that another time._**

**_Shutterbug5269_**


	22. Vengeance and Redemption

**Chapter Twenty Two  
****Vengeance and Redemption**

* * *

_Hate  
I'm your hate  
I'm your hate when you want love  
Pay  
Pay the price  
Pay, for nothing's fair_

Hey  
I'm your life  
I'm the one who took you there  
Hey  
I'm your life  
And I no longer care

I'm your dream, make you real  
I'm your eyes when you must steal  
I'm your pain when you can't feel  
Sad but true

I'm your truth, telling lies  
I'm your reasoned alibis  
I'm inside open your eyes  
I'm you

_Metallica: Sad But True_

* * *

_Previously_

_Jeremy arrived at the address Jerry had given him and removed the wheelchair from the trunk, unfolded it and carefully slipped Alexis from the backseat of the car and deposited her into it to wheel her into the warehouse where Tyson had instructed him to take Alexis when the time came. He left her disassembled cell phone in the glove compartment._

_If he had read the files correctly about this address, it was the same one Jerry had used to stockpile all of the evidence needed to clear Richard Castle as part of his original revenge scheme back in the fall of 2012. He had been curious all of this time, why a man who was such a meticulous planner would make the critical mistake of using a building that had already been tied to him. A building someone was bound to check out eventually._

_He hadn't quite gotten his bearings in the structure, before he heard a man clear his throat. When he turned around to see who it was, he felt the sharp bite of taser electrodes digging into his clothes. The last thing he saw was Jerry Tyson as he pulled the trigger. _

_Then he saw only shadows._

* * *

Two hours later

Jeremy Christian woke groggily where he had fallen on the warehouse floor. He checked his pockets and found that he had everything on his person except his NYPD issue sidearm and his cell phone.

He had been unprepared for Tyson to be here so soon. Though when he pondered it for a moment, it occurred to him that since the back trace from his phone call to the Castle loft had not led the NYPD the New York State Troopers or the US Marshal's service to a 200 year old house in the Capital region he should have been, but he had been deep in his preparations for the last two murders of the cycle.

It dawned upon him then, as he rose unsteadily to his feet, that he had allowed himself to become complacent. It should have been obvious that the phone call had originated in the city. Likely on the other side of Manhattan.

He walked up the stairs to what had once been the warehouse's second floor office. The wheelchair he had brought Alexis into the building in was sitting on it's side next to a large metal door that was solidly barred. Her shoes and jacket and the belt from her slacks (the holster for her handcuffs empty) haphazardly dumped next to the door.

Tyson was not concerned with her escaping, given the solid construction of the steel door, and the bar held it fast, so he had not been all that concerned about where he placed her things. Jeremy knew his stepfather never intended for her to come out of that door alive.

"I see you have recovered." Tyson said coldly from his wheelchair. "The Tasing was for altering the plan, for playing fast and loose with victim selection. For trying to make me look desperate. Let that be a lesson for you. I am never desperate. You understand me boy?"

Without looking from the barred door, with the woman he loved on the other side, he nodded absently. The ball was in Tyson's court for now. If he was in the wheelchair, it meant he had come all the way to New York and likely taken the subway here from Penn Station without using it then had carried Alexis into the barred room that was now her prison.

He knew he couldn't confront Jerry directly yet. He had been unconscious for he didn't know how long, Jerry had had time to do any number of things he had no clue about. He needed to get his bearings, see what part of his plan needed to be altered or dropped entirely. First and foremost, he would have to double check that his ammunition had not been tampered with. Better yet, get his spare magazines from the car. He would have to go there to retrieve his messenger bag before he could put any kind of plan into motion, regardless.

Upon close inspection, he had come to the revelation that his cell phone had not been successfully tampered with. Tyson had made clumsy, though imaginative attempts, but to no avail. He changed his i phone's password regularly, made a point of using codes for things Tyson would never know.

A habit that had been borne not only from his background in cyber security, which had, in recent years become a prerequisite for police work as well as forensics, but also because he had spent most of his formative years under the thumb of a sadistic killer who like to play mind games. He had learned the hard way at age fifteen, the need to compartmentalize information he didn't want Tyson to know about.

Before he had transferred to the 12th Precinct, he had served for a year in Stella Bonasera's CSI unit. During that time, he had made up for any gaps in his education in this area She had never questioned his competence, but she had been greatly concerned about his tendency to keep to himself and not form friendships. She had been every bit as well meaning, as Tyson had been domineering. He never told her anything about his past, but as somebody who had been abused, she could obviously read the signals he didn't know he had been sending at the time.

If only she could see him now. Though to be sure she would be taking him into custody at this point.

* * *

Kate had been trying to reach Alexis for hours. Rick had been moved into a standard room first thing this morning. Her cell was going straight to voice mail, and Alexis _never_ turned off her phone. One of the few habits of hers that had survived her childhood. Her cell phone had even been on in it's charger when she had been undercover. She had occasionally used a burner to send a photo of herself, to her own cell to let her father know she was okay. He had only begun to worry when they had stopped coming.

But if Alexis' phone was off, there had to be something wrong

She called in to the precinct and used her authority as the 12 Precinct's Captain. _Abused my authority would be more accurate. _Her traitorous mind added.

She had Alexis' NYPD issued tablet location pinged to find that it was in her apartment. Given that she had gone out on a date with her boyfriend Jeremy and allowing for post date "activities" it stood to reason that hers and Jeremy's tablets would be there. Her cell phone and his were, however both unreachable. She called the one person she knew not only could, but would move heaven and earth to find her, on nothing more than her say-so.

Javier Esposito.

He didn't merely send a team to Alexis apartment, he went himself, with a team of his best operators, men he had trained _personally _and used his authority to wake the landlord and get her to let them in. Neither Alexis nor CSI Jeremy Christian were anywhere to be seen, though her badge, pistols and tablet were found neatly arranged on her bedside table, his own tablet was nearby, though his cell and weapon were missing, as was Alexis' phone.

Within twenty minutes an alert went out that a police officer was missing, and presumed kidnapped along with an NYPD CSI. The call went out all over the island of Manhattan as the thin blue line mobilized to search frantically for two of its own. When he called her back, and she told him about Tyson's phone call, he had told her to be prepared for the possibility that snatching Alexis could have been that sick bastard's plan all along and that this whole series of murders had been a sideshow for their benefit. Now that she thought about it openly, it would have definitely been his style.

Kate took command of the search from Rick's bedside, for once thankful that his doctors were keeping him sedated, having decided that waking up to such a traumatic even may have a negative impact on his recovery. Unlike the last time Alexis had been forcibly kidnapped, her father was in no condition to mount a last ditch rescue of his daughter. He would only be made to suffer here in silence. She was glad that he was out cold. She remembered the words he had spoken over the phone that last time, the ones that had stopped her reassuring platitude as she opened her mouth to voice it. Words that still had power to this very day.

"_Kate, don't ...don't promise me you'll find her unless you can do it, because I would never forgive you, any more than I would forgive myself."_

There were already far too many things for which she needed to beg her husband's forgiveness. Losing Alexis would be that one blow too many for her husband. Especially given this most recent unresolved issue and her complicity in it. That he had been denied the chance to forgive her for lying to him. It could send him teetering into an abyss from which there was no recovery. She would wait to hit him with that, take the chance that Javier could find her first. Give the story a happy ending, before Rick could spin off on one of his dark worst case scenarios.

Javier needed this chance to redeem himself in his own eyes, every bit as much as she was clinging to the last shred of hope that she was still alive to be saved. She had never felt so completely powerless in her entire life. Including the day she had gone toe to toe with Maddox and gotten her ass handed to her with ridiculous ease, and the summer after her shooting. This was ten times worse.

* * *

Alexis Castle woke groggily in a dimply lit room. The first thing that struck her was that she wasn't in her apartment. The second was that her wrists were handcuffed above her head to the steel frame of a cot that barely deserved the name. When she tried her legs she discovered two additional pieces of information. One was that her feet were also manacled to the bed frame, the other was that she was no longer wearing her boots.

The thin mattress was not particularly comfortable, but at the moment that seemed to be the least of her worries. Foremost on her mind right now was the fact that she was bound hand and foot to a cot in a room with no windows and was fully at the mercy of whomever had drugged her and brought her here. She didn't even know who that was.

A situation that sent her mind spinning to another time ten years ago when she and Sara El-Masri had awakened in that windowless room they had been initially held in before their first escape attempt. A room oddly reminiscent of this one, but for the cot she currently occupied. It took her several moments of deep breathing exercises to stave off a complete panic attack. She nearly jumped out of her skin, when a voice she didn't recognize suddenly made it's presence known.

"Detective Alexis Castle," the man said, I see you're finally awake. But I believe I have you at a disadvantage here, and not just because you're manacled to that cot. I think I should make your acquaintance. My name is Jerry Tyson."

Alexis' blood curdled at that revelation. She wasn't just at the mercy of some random nut job off the street. She was being held by one of the most notorious serial killers in over a decade.

"Where's Jeremy?" she said coldly, "What have you done to him?"

Jerry chuckled at that and eyed her coolly.

"I believe, Detective," Tyson said, "that this is where I am supposed to ask you about your intentions toward my _son_."

Alexis was shocked into silence.

Jeremy was watching the exchange between Tyson and Alexis on the monitor for the video camera wondering when the real torture would begin he wasn't even entirely sure who's benefit this exchange was for, his or hers, because his reaction to it was much the same as hers. In the entire time he had ever known Tyson, the man had never once made any pretense of a familial connection to him. Rarely even called him by name. Now he was referring to him as his son, with just enough heartfelt inflection to make it seem like Tyson actually had a fondness for him.

"Your...son?" Alexis choked... her mind reeling...all of a sudden she was finding it difficult to think or to breathe..

"Not by birth, mind you, but he has been _mine, _body and soul, since he was ten years old."

"_No!" _Jeremy's mind cried out in his head.._. "No no no no...not this way...don't let her find out this way..."_

"I bet you always wondered what happened to you your dear grandmother...didn't you?" Jerry said, his voice almost sounding compassionate "Her case that went unsolved all of these years? Maybe this will help."

Jerry produced a remote control from his pocket and three monitors came to life within Alexis' easy view, so that no matter where she turned she couldn't look away the sound loud enough so she couldn't ignore it...the video Jeremy made over ten years ago with his phone as he clinically told Tyson what he had done and how...his voice breaking with emotion as he answered Tyson's questions the voice he knew she recognized as his as he saw the horror break upon her face.

The horror that all this time she had been sleeping with the man who killed her grams. Had fallen in love with him...that he had seen her naked...and had made love to her.

For the first time...he learned the identity of the kind elderly woman he had killed all of those years ago...he couldn't see couldn't think...as he backed to the wall and slid down to the floor. His horror at the revelation nearly equaled hers. Tyson had known all along whom he had been sent to kill that night.

"He had never killed anyone before, and she had been nice to him, nicer than I or even his worthless excuse for a mother had ever been. He cried his eyes out for killing her. Even after I had his own mother beat him to within an inch of his life for trying to defy me over her."

"_No...no...no...no...no" _his mind raged...barely able to process what was going on. He couldn't see...couldn't breathe...couldn't think...he could hear Alexis' screams and anguish coming through the monitor and it was killing him...that he had brought this much pain to her doorstep, done so a decade before he ever met her. Tyson had driven the proverbial knife deep in his own heart...just as he was doing to Alexis.

"I'll just leave this on." Jerry said as he walked out of the room. "we will be getting to know each other very well in the next few hours. This should put you in the frame of mind to savor the experience. You might even like it when I'm done."

Tyson dropped into this wheelchair as soon as he secured the door. The video Jeremy had made of his postmortem report back then was set on infinite loop. He would let her stew for a few hours while he got some rest. It had been a long train ride, and he needed to get some sleep and prepare for the interesting day he was going to have with Castle's daughter tomorrow. He would make her beg. Make her plead for death when he was done...make her cry out for a daddy who would never come to her rescue.

He was going to enjoy deflowering her for the camera. He had been planning this night in his head for nearly ten years. Ten years to come up with every conceivable way to debase her...ruin her. The marks he would leave on her skin on her face before he slipped the rope around her pale neck and drew it tight. He couldn't decide which would be more interesting though, kill her or completely destroy her and let her live as a useless broken thing. Each had their appeal and both would completely destroy Castle and Beckett. He would decide later, perhaps he would make sure Jeremy watched too...teach him a lesson. Make sure that Castle and Beckett got a copy.

He thought of all of these things as he locked himself in his room.

* * *

An Hour later

Jeremy had finally found his footing and dragged himself to his feet and walked unsteadily to Alexis' cell. He used his EMP device to kill the monitors...and the cameras...wishing he could do the same for the pain she was feeling, the torment Tyson had imposed...he had to get her out...he had only a short window...before Tyson came back.

He was intimately familiar with how long it took for him to recover after being on his feet, having hacked into Tyson's records from his physical therapist. He knew he only had a short time to act and he could not allow this to continue.

He ran out to his clean car, retrieved her phone from the glove box and put the battery back in...sent a hurried text from it to Captain Esposito with the warehouse's location and leaving it on just inside the doorway. Once he sent it, he knew he would likely only have an hour...maybe less to deal with Tyson before they traced it to this location and came in heavy. This has to stop...now.

He crept into the room, carrying her shoes. He had her feet unlocked and was slipping her shoes on them when she startled to consciousness and started screaming at him, fighting against the restraints holding her in place.

"You bastard, Jeremy...you fucking bastard! Don't touch me! DON'T YOU EVER TOUCH ME AGAIN!"

She raged and struggled as he slipped the key to her handcuffs into her hand. Her mind reeling...he had killed grams...but...she loved him...but he _killed grams..._

"I'm sorry Alexis" Jeremy whispered, tears running down his cheeks, "I'm so sorry...He made me...I was only 15 and I had no choice at the time. I didn't even know who she was. I'm so sorry."

He slipped a hand written letter into the pocket of her shirt, "This will explain everything. Detail everything Tyson did to my mother and me since I was ten years old. I know it doesn't excuse anything I've done...doesn't make _any_ of it right. I'm sorry I'm so sorry...I really do love you...I'm so sorry."

He kissed her...had aimed for her mouth but she turned away from him so his lips fell on her cheek. Then he rose to confront the architect of it all. Grief and pain spilling over into rage and hate as he clutched one of the white phosphorus grenades her had made.

A vengeful phoenix rising from the ashes to burn Tyson, and his own sins away with cleansing fire.

Tyson was in the doorway and was about to say something as Jeremy pulled the pin on his incendiary grenade and moved on him. He punched Jerry full in the midsection with the hand holding the now live incendiary grenade and slammed him bodily out of the door, taking his stepfather apart with punches and kicks, not allowing him any opening to fight back as he pulled him roughly from the floor, pushing him farther down the hall away from Alexis. Away from the woman he loved, who was forever denied him now...but he loved her too much to let that stop him. He loved her enough to let her go.

"Jerry, you sadistic self absorbed bastard! You cannot have her...I won't let you, you sick son of a bitch! I am going to end you...end us both...you _will not hurt her or her family any more...and neither will I.!" _he screamed as he hauled the man to his feet, popped the spoon on the grenade and pushed it into Jerry's shirt. For the first time in his life 3XK knew fear. He would only know it for the three seconds for the fuse to ignite the charge.

"I have sold my soul to see you die."

Alexis had opened her handcuffs and had followed them down the hall. She had heard his dying declaration both of his love for her and his willingness to die to protect her...followed swiftly by a deafening explosion as the incendiary grenade went off in the confined space in the hallway.

"Nooooooooo!" she tried to run after them, but couldn't get any closer as the flames burned too hot forcing her back.

"Jeremy..." she moaned "...no...I for...forgive you...I forgive...you" she sobbed as she fell to her knees and burst into tears for a man she should hate...who's name she should curse for the rest of her life...she should rue the day he was ever born...but she couldn't. She loved him. God help her she loved him, and now he was dead.

The letter he had given her...crumpled in her hands...was all she had left of him.

When Javi, and his men burst in the door, weapons drawn, they found her crumpled to her knees on the floor. A crumpled piece of paper in her hands.

"Little Castle! Javi whispered, trying to be as comforting as he could as he hoisted her up bridal style and carried her from the now burning structure. "Where's Christian? Where did he go?"

All she could do was cry...and point to the flames...where Jerry Tyson had been consumed, and, as far as she was concerned, the sins of Jeremy Christian had been burned clean.

_**Author's note** And here we are the final chapter of this tale. (though there will be an epilogue in the offing, an apology of sorts for the darkness of the tale) My darkest story yet. Filled with rage spite hate blood and death. Martha murdered in an alley, Richard Castle broken and crushed, Kate resolved guilt ridden and mourning for what could have been, but wasn't. My protagonist, Jeremy Christian lost to his cause, and Jerry Tyson a slave to his vengeance. I know that there is very little in the way of fluff here. I would like to take the time to thank some people who have helped me along the way._

_Castle 12 Precinct for setting up the Castle Ficathon this summer _

_Angie (Dtrekker) for making the very imaginative banner _

_Nerwen Aldarion for reading the original treatment and not murdering me on the spot._

_Lady Brenlis, for doing some Beta for me on chapter one._

_And for all of you who have read and reviewed this story and not passed out pitchforks and torches to the fandom and storming my home en masse...Thank you all for indulging me in this very dark tale of vengeance and redemption._

_Shutterbug5269_

_post script.: Sadly I have failed to meet the deadline. I had all of this typed and ready to post when I left for work, figuring I would have plenty of time to post it before the deadline when I got home, but alas my ride home fell asleep and forgot to come get me. I did not get home till 1:30 AM._

_I feel like such a loser._


	23. The Beginning of the End

**Chapter Twenty Three**  
**The Beginning of the End**

* * *

_This is the end_  
_Beautiful friend_  
_This is the end_  
_My only friend, the end_

_Of our elaborate plans, the end_  
_Of everything that stands, the end_  
_No safety or surprise, the end_  
_I'll never look into your eyes...again_

_The Doors: The End_

* * *

_Previous_

_Alexis had opened her handcuffs and had followed them down the hall. She had heard his dying declaration both of his love for her and his willingness to die to protect her...followed swiftly by a deafening explosion as the incendiary grenade went off in the confined space in the hallway. _

"_Nooooooooo!" she tried to run after them, but couldn't get any closer as the flames burned too hot forcing her back._

"_Jeremy..." she moaned "...no...I for...forgive you...I forgive...you" she sobbed as she fell to her knees and burst into tears for a man she should hate...who's name she should curse for the rest of her life...she should rue the day he was ever born...but she couldn't. She loved him. God help her she loved him, and now he was dead._

_The letter he had given her...crumpled in her hands...was all she had left of him._

_When Javi, and his men burst in the door, weapons drawn, they found her crumpled to her knees on the floor. A crumpled piece of paper in her hands._

"_Little Castle! Javi whispered, trying to be as comforting as he could as he hoisted her up bridal style and carried her from the now burning structure. "Where's Christian? Where did he go?"_

_All she could do was cry...and point toward the flames...where Jerry Tyson had been consumed and, as far as she was concerned, the sins of Jeremy Christian had been burned clean._

* * *

Captain Esposito carried a sobbing, inconsolable Alexis outside as fires sparked by Jeremy's incendiary grenade began to overtake the building, ordering his men to pull back as the building began to be consumed. He remembered this warehouse quite well from over a decade ago, the last time Tyson had surfaced. Remembered with shame that he had, even for a moment, lost faith in Richard Castle, had allowed himself to buy into the deception.

Only Beckett had, without reservation, believed Castle from the start. Ryan and himself had been trying to make up for that lapse in fellowship ever since. With only limited success as far as he was concerned.

Tonight, he felt an equal amount of shame that he had had so little faith in Jeremy Christian. Something about the young man had always rubbed him the wrong way...had made him wary of him. He was man enough to admit he had been wrong to not trust him, not trusted Alexis when she chose to give him her heart. A heart that was now broken into a million pieces because that same man had made the ultimate sacrifice to save her life tonight. For an old soldier like Javier Esposito that was proof enough of the boy's worth.

Jeremy Christian may have been just a crime scene analyst, a lab rat, a squint, but he had held the thin blue line and died like cop, served and protected like a cop, and with God as his witness, he would make sure the man was laid to rest like one, fully honored for his sacrifice. He owed the man nothing less.

He knew from deep personal experience as a Special Forces operator, that though Jeremy was beyond all of their pale power to add or detract, beyond his ability to do anything for him but light a candle at mass, (he had rediscovered his faith in God over the years) Alexis would need the cortege, the caisson, the pipes and drums, the rifles and the folded flag. They all did. A chance for all of them to mourn for their honored dead. Mourn for what could have been.

"Little Castle" needed the chance to say goodbye to Jeremy in a formal way, every bit as much as Beckett, Kevin, Alexis' father and himself had needed it when Montgomery died. She might not see it right now, might not want to see it, as consumed by her grief as she was, but...in time she would come to that realization just like he had.

When he reached the ESU staging area, he was escorted to the waiting ambulance where he deposited his now unconscious charge on the bench for the paramedics to look over. He slipped the envelope, addressed to her in Jeremy's neat, artistic handwriting from her slender hands and slipped it into his pocket. He would keep it safe for her and respect her privacy by leaving it unopened.

"Take special care of her Gage," he said authoritatively, "she's been through a lot and had a hell of a shock. You treat her right." Though unnecessary and left unsaid, the words..._or you'll answer to me_ hung in the air between them.

"Understood." said the lead ESU tactical paramedic, as his assistant placed an oxygen mask over her face and began taking her vitals "we'll take good care of her, Captain."

"Transport her to Presbyterian, her stepmother, Captain Beckett of the 12th is there and has power of attorney for her care." Javier told them.

Though it was not the nearest hospital to their location, they kept that information to themselves. It was clear by the steel in Captain Javier Esposito's voice and in his eyes, before he slammed the ambulance door shut, that this was not a request. It was a command, from a man who was not to be disobeyed.

"Gage," the young female EMT remarked, coolly professional in her assessment, "I'm reading fetal heart sounds, we need to get her checked out by a doctor..ASAP!"

Tactical Paramedic John Gage III, was a third generation EMS professional. His grandfather had served in the L.A. County Fire Department, Station 51 at the very dawn of emergency medicine. He had served for several years as an ESU paramedic and trained in with Capt. Esposito's people a little over three years ago. He had been called to the scene personally, by the captain himself to take charge of this very special patient, but with him gone to take charge of the scene, she was his patient now. He would do what was best for her care.

He pounded the front wall of the unit to get the driver's attention. "We're rolling to Presbyterian." He got on the radio as the driver fired up the unit's powerful engine and turned on the lights and siren.

"Presbyterian Hospital...NYPD EMS unit 238," he spoke tersely into his mic, "patient is a female police detective, late twenties...unconscious, presenting with possible smoke inhalation, minor burns and associated emotional trauma, possible unknown drug interaction. Primary on scene assessment revealed fetal heart sounds, estimate patient to be at least three weeks pregnant. NYPD EMS unit 238 reading code 10-82 time 11:38 e.t.a., fifteen minutes out."

"Understood, NYPD unit 238, Presbyterian ER reads you as fifteen minutes inbound, code 10-82."

* * *

After slamming the rear doors of the EMS unit closed, Javier Esposito turned about to take active command of the scene. He would be coordinating with the NYFD engine company on site, as the fire in the warehouse was now fully involved, the entire building ablaze. He had recognized the smell of white phosphorus from his days in the forces. He wondered where Tyson might have gotten hold of it, and what his plans for Alexis might have been.

_Bait for a trap to kill Beckett or Kevin most likely_. His mind supplied. Any evidence was likely to be hard to come by and most of it would be heavily contaminated by the fire. He knew how hot "Willie Pete" could burn. As much as he hated the idea of leaving a fallen brother in arms behind, likely entombed forever with that sick fuck, Tyson, he had to put the living (both his team, and Alexis) before the dead.

Jeremy had given his life, taking Tyson down with him, in order to save her, risking her life further would have been an insult to the boy's memory. Esposito knew he had one more duty to perform, before attending to the business at hand. Bittersweet as the news was, he pulled out his cell phone to call Beckett.

* * *

"...thank you Javi, I'll meet her downstairs when the ambulance gets here." Kate said into her iPhone, her voice tinged with shock, a mix of joy and sorrow, before closing the line.

On the one hand, Alexis was alive, she had survived her ordeal at Tyson's hands, and the murdering bastard was finally dead. On the other, was the fact that the man Alexis loved was dead, having given his life to save hers. It had come very close to happening with her and Castle so many times she had lost count. It seemed that their luck had skipped a generation and visited the worst case scenario on the Alexis.

Kate knew that her stepdaughter would have to be devastated, this blow would be just as crushing to her as her grandmother's death had been. A new wave of tears welled up in her eyes, and she didn't even bother trying to hold them back as she dropped her head to Rick's chest, and felt her whole body heave as she wept and sobbed uncontrollably.

A short time later, after she had cried herself out, Kate splashed some cold water on her face, made certain her badge and gun were on prominent display and kissed Rick on the forehead before running down the stairwell to the ER. She knew in her heart where Rick would want her to be.

She made it just as Alexis was being wheeled in. She was conscious but far from lucid. Screaming about a letter...Jeremy's letter. Thankfully Espo had provided her with the balm to soothe that fear.

"Kate...please...I can't find it...it's all I have left of him...please...help me find it!" Alexis cried as she took her hand. She seemed so small and fragile in a way she hadn't been in a very long time.

"Shh, Alexis...shh...it's okay" Kate whispered in her stepdaughter's ear as she brushed a lock of red hair from her face, "Espo called to let me know you were coming. He wanted me to tell you he found it...he's keeping it safe for you...no one will see it before you do...he gave me his word."

This seemed to quiet her a little. She was still shaken...still broken...still mourning the man she had loved and lost. The man Jerry Tyson had taken from her. She seemed hollowed out and empty.

"Excuse me ma'am," the ER doctor said "we're gonna need you to step out so we can examine her."

"NO!" Alexis cried out...clutching Kate's hand even tighter,"Please...don't leave me!"

The doctor nodded at her and snapped an order to a nurse, who made quick work of undressing Alexis, looking for any injuries, before slipping a hospital gown on her. Of particular concern were the prominent restraint marks on her wrists and ankles. The red, raw ligature marks made a stark contrast against her pale, porcelain skin.

Kate felt like she was going to be sick when she saw them. Knowing who had to have put them there. Knowing the bastard had wanted to leave one more around her slender neck.

"Are you her next of kin?" The young LPN asked, snapping Kate out of her downward spiral of dark contemplation.

"Yes," Kate replied as she flashed her badge, "Captain, Kate Beckett, NYPD, I'm her stepmother. Her father is...under sedation upstairs. I have durable power of attorney for Alexis in his absence."

Kate Beckett breathed a silent "thank you" to her departed father, who had set the durable power of attorney up after she and Rick were married. Alexis' kidnapping had been fresh on their minds and he wanted to make sure, given the danger that followed them that Kate could make medical decisions for himself or Alexis and vice/versa if any of them were unavailable.

"Was Alexis aware that she was pregnant?"

Kate nearly fainted dead away at those seven words. It took everything she had to remain on her four inch heels.

"Okay..." the young nurse replied, "judging from your reaction I am going to say...no."

"Any idea who the father might be?" She asked "Can he be contacted?"

The young nurse had not been prepared for Alexis' to hear their exchange, nor for the severity of her reaction.

"He's dead...my Jeremy is dead! He's dead...and the last thing he saw before he died was me...pushing...him away..." the rest swiftly degenerated into hysterics as Alexis broke down sobbing.

The ER attending returned a few minutes later.

"My name is Dr. Simon Davidson, There doesn't appear to be anything seriously wrong with Detective Castle, physically, but I am concerned about her state of mind and her pregnancy. I would like to admit her for observation until I can get a psych consult and someone from Obstetrics to examine her."

Kate couldn't help herself. "Dr. Davidson? Would you be any relation to...?"

"I thought your name sounded familiar," The young ER attendant replied, "yeah, I'm his nephew. Mom told me that Uncle Josh had always been a self centered egotistical prick, even when they were kids, but he definitely has good taste in women."

"He told me about you once, when I was an intern doing my surgical rotation, he actually couldn't figure out what the _Writer Monkey_ had that he didn't. Trust me, Captain Beckett, you dodged a bullet, he's on divorce number three and still hasn't learned a thing about how to behave in a relationship."

"Well, my husband, Richard Castle has a private room on the second floor," Kate replied, "if you could put her in there when you admit her, it would make looking after them both a little less stressful for everybody. Especially when they take Rick off the sedatives tomorrow and he wakes up."

"I'll see what I can do."

Kate knew that the best medicine for Rick was seeing that Alexis was okay and that Tyson was dead. That he was no longer a threat. Finding out that Alexis was pregnant was a bit of a shock to her system, but she would roll with it. Their little family had survived this latest test. She knew that Rick's anger would fade in time, now that the worst was past.

Perhaps now, the true healing could begin. For them all.

* * *

_** Author's note** I decided to do this filler chapter before I wrote the epilogue. Thought I would finish the thought for this chapter and add a "little surprise" too many people were asking me about "little Castle babies" well here you go. Just not he "Little Castle Babies you were thinking! LOL Look for the epilogue after the premiere._

_Shutterbug5269_


	24. Epilogue

**Chapter Twenty Four  
****Epilogue**

_This is the end  
Beautiful friend  
This is the end  
My only friend, the end_

It hurts to set you free  
But you'll never follow me  
The end of laughter and soft lies  
The end of nights we tried to die

This is the end

_The Doors: The End_

* * *

Seven Days Later

The drums beat a martial rhythm as the members of the NYPD's 12th Precinct marched into Forest Hills Cemetery to lay to rest one of their own, fallen in the line of duty. At the head of the procession behind the hearse marched Captain Kate Beckett and Detective Alexis Castle in their crisp dress uniforms, their hats on their heads.

Behind them walked Richard Castle, solemn and resolute in his best black Armani suit. His eyes clouded over with the anti anxiety meds in his system mixed with sadness for his baby girl. The man she loved was dead, and he felt it was only right and proper that he be here, but his mind could not help but go back to the last time he had been to a police funeral. The last time he saw Kate in this place in her dress uniform, lying in his arms bleeding in the grass after a sniper had shot her in the chest. He was glad Kate had made him take the drugs this time.

Following in lockstep behind them came Captain Javier Esposito and Lieutenant Kevin Ryan in their dress blues Followed by Lanie Parrish, Jeremy's boss, dressed smartly in a black formal dress complete with veil. The two of them and four other NYPD officers, would act as pallbearers for the young man none of them had gotten to know very well, but all of whom owed a great debt.

Javier had insisted on the full honors funeral for Jeremy. Moved heaven and earth to make it happen. He had an unexpected ally in his quest. Chief of Detectives Victoria Gates, and The New York City Police commissioner.

The handwritten letter in the envelope that Jeremy had placed in her hands before confronting Tyson had been a personal one, written before he had known that it had been her grams that he had killed in that alley all of those years ago.

* * *

_Dearest Alexis,_

_If you are reading this letter, it means that I am dead. I am very sorry, I have done some terrible things in my life, trying to rid the world of Jerry Tyson. The only good thing that has ever come my way in my association with him was you._

_My mother came to know him while he was still in prison, before anyone knew he was 3XK. He came to live with us when I was eight years old, and from the first day he had sought to establish dominance. He locked my mother in a room in the basement the day he moved into the house and for two whole days all I heard from my bedroom was her screaming. A sound I will never get out of my head...my mothers screams that night. From that day forward he took over as my primary caregiver. He wanted me to be just like him. Used my mother to abuse me at every opportunity._

_The things he had my mother do to me I will not put into words. I can't. They are too terrible to speak of. He had her take me with him to visit my grandparents in the hospital and I watched as she injected a lethal overdose of their pain medication into their IV's after disconnecting the alarms. Watched her kill them for him without a second thought or any remorse._

_He was different when he came back from New York City in the wheelchair in 2012. Before, he took little notice of me, other than to teach me not to care for other people. He had been a controlled coiled snake then, but he was worse after. Like he had gone completely insane. He wanted nothing but vengeance._

_He wanted to use me as the instrument of that vengeance. Years later, after I met you, I realized what he wanted me to do was wrong, I wanted out, but it was too late. He still had my mother, she was likely beyond saving, but she was still my mom. I had no choice but to do what he said, if I wanted to save her, but I knew I could not let him have you, let him do what he planned._

_If you are reading this letter, then I have succeeded in my mission but did not live to tell you myself or to beg for your forgiveness. I am so very sorry for any pain I have caused you. I hope someday you can forgive me._

_I love you._

_Jeremy._

* * *

She had burned the letter after reading it. A micro SD card had been included in the envelope. In it was an address for a farmhouse in Albany where his mother was being held. She sent the information to the New York State Trooper Albany Barracks who hit the place and found Caroline Christian still in the basement, weak from malnutrition, but still alive. The report she had been given was that she tried to attack the trooper who came in the door to save her and had to be restrained. Not once did she ask about her son, screaming, crying out for Jerry to come save her.

Upon being told that he was dead, killed by her son, she said something that chilled her to the bone when she was told of it.

"_He is no son of mine, let him rot, he murdered the love of my life."_

She would spend the rest of her life in an asylum for the criminally insane, for the murders of her parents. The case had been circumstantial until she blurted out in court that she had done it...gladly..because Jerry had asked her to, and she loved him. Her lawyer pleaded diminished capacity, and the judge agreed.

Alexis had decided in her own mind, that it had, in fact, been Jerry Tyson who killed her grams, not Jeremy. That the video he had played for her had been faked. Tyson had done it. She repeated it to herself over and over in her head every night before she went to sleep for the past week since the two of them died until she believed it.

It was the only way she could rationalize in her mind that she still loved him, just as madly and deeply as she did before she found out what he had done. _What Jerry had done._ Her mind corrected. The twin babies growing in her womb (an ultrasound had determined that it was two fetal hearts beating that night not one) would want to know about their father, and she wanted them to love their dad as much as she did.

Jerry Tyson was dead and in no position to complain or deny it. What was one more body added to his name?

* * *

As the funeral proceeded to it's destination, the drums stopped. The hearse was opened and Jeremy's flag draped coffin was removed by the pallbearers, led by Ryan and Esposito and delivered with solemn reverence to his final resting place. There had been very little left of him but charred bones after the warehouse fire burned itself out, requiring a closed casket funeral, but at least she had a body to bury. Jerry's had been closest to the incendiary grenade when it went off and had been mostly ashes, the explosion having blown Jeremy's body clear.

The flag was folded into into a triangle, and a police sergeant she didn't know knelt in front of her to present it.

"_By the authority of the Mayor and the Police commissioner of New York, I present you with this flag, for his sacrifice, on behalf of a grateful city."_

Alexis took it in her numb hands, her mind a thousand miles away, until the rifles fired their three volleys which brought her back to the moment. Her father made a small squeak each time the rifles fired, his eyes drawn to Kate. In his head she knew he was being drawn back to another sunny day much like this one in May of 2011. Alexis took her father's hand and squeezed it without looking back at him. Helping to ground him. She knew that Kate would take care of the rest.

She sat in silence during the wake for Jeremy in _"The Old Haunt."_ She sipped from her glass of apple juice at the appropriate times as the others in attendance drank to Jeremy's memory, her hand unconsciously drawn to her abdomen, where his babies were growing. By the time they were old enough to tell them about their daddy, all memory of his sins would be gone.

Only their love would remain.

Always.

* * *

Nine Months Later

At nine o'clock AM, Alexis Castle gave birth to her fraternal twins. The first was a boy, whom she named Jeremy Alexander Castle, after his father and her dad's original middle name. Two minutes later, a little girl burst into the world screaming, whom she named Johanna Elaine Castle. After Kate's mother and her mentor, Lanie Parrish. Lanie had nearly fainted when she found out later.

Her father and mother had both been present at the birth.

Rick had been steadily improving since the death of Jerry Tyson. It had taken a month of silence and separate rooms before he had been willing to forgive Kate for hiding the truth about Tyson from him. His therapist finally helping him to see that his wife and his daughter had not been trying to hide this from him to hurt him, but had instead had meant the opposite.

Alexis' steadily advancing pregnancy had been the final catalyst to make them finally see past the lingering guilt and anger so they could reconcile. An angry rant from her after a particularly bad bout of morning sickness and pregnancy hormones had sealed the deal. She had been so angry and upset with the two of them after an argument that she had nearly collapsed and had come close to a miscarriage. It was a wake-up call for the both of them that life was simply too short to linger over past mistakes.

Ekaterina had glared at the two of them, muttering angry curse words under her breath in Russian in their direction that even Kate didn't understand for days afterward.

It had taken another month of unofficial sessions with Dr. Burke, who had elected to keep seeing her after his retirement, for her to forgive herself, though to some degree, even through the drugs he was on, Rick could tell she had never fully done so, and likely never will.

They gained ground steadily after that.

By the time Alexis' due date had drawn near, Rick's doctors had taken him off of the regular dosages of anti-anxiety drugs and back on the regimen he had been on before this whole ordeal began. He was finding his equilibrium again as he helped his daughter navigate her pregnancy. She had been placed on bed rest following the near miscarriage, so he took it upon himself to keep her entertained.

He dusted off the old X-box and they played Halo, and Guitar Hero. Read books back and forth with each other and reconnected as father and daughter in a way they hadn't since his mother had died. Since he had lost himself, and she had fled to avoid seeing it. Because seeing it would have made it real for her. For the first time since it overtook her father's life, she was coming to terms with his illness. Life was getting better.

Richard Castle was battling back, this time in a more healthy way than he had when he had helped Kate through her father's death. He was getting better, slowly becoming whole again. Though this disorder would likely haunt him for the rest of his life, he was finally coming to terms with it.

Finally coming to terms with the murder of his mother.

* * *

Richard Castle looked down at the tiny newborn baby girl and boy sleeping peacefully side by side in the cradle in the hospital nursery. They were both seven pounds, nine ounces, and 60 centimeters long. Little Johanna had her mother's eyes and fiery red hair. Little Jeremy had his father's (god rest his soul) chocolate brown eyes and his own brown hair They were perfect and beautiful and had the best mother they could possibly ever have.

He knew Alexis would have a busy work schedule when she came off maternity leave. Though he knew that she loved these two little bundles of joy more than anything in this world, he also knew that these baby's mommy was also dedicated to her job.

Dedicated to helping taking murderers off the streets, to make her part of the city she loved safer for her babies to grow up in. She was tireless in seeking justice, so he knew he would be spending a lot of time with these two little ones in the loft.

It had been a very long time since it had rung with the laughter of children playing within its walls. He hadn't realized until just this moment how much he truly missed it. Wished he had been able to give Kate children of their own, but the both of them would relish this time, just like he had when Alexis was growing up. There would be games and fun and laughter. There would be movies, and lightsaber duels and EPIC Laser Tag battles. He would tell them stories and love them as if they were his.

He was completely unprepared for this experience, after ten years trapped in his own head, a prisoner of his illness and trauma. He was amazed at how much these two tiny lives in front of him simply swelled his heart with more love than he thought any one human could ever possess. He was totally smitten, from the first moment he'd laid eyes on them.

Everything was going to change. Everything had already changed. His entire world was already spinning off into a completely different dimension and though it scared the hell out of him at times, had him reaching for the pills the doctors had given him to take when he needed to take the edge off of his fear, secretly he was loving every minute of it. So was Kate, who had fallen in love with these two babies as swiftly and as surely as he did. Their lives were full and rich, even if he went broke tomorrow.

Of all of the changes that had taken place in his life to bring him to this time and this place and presented him with these two little babies, the one change that he had thought up until now that he would never be ready for, even before his mother was killed and he spun off into madness, was the one that now lay before him. The role he now knew he had been born to play.

The role of...___Grandfather_.

He knew in his heart, that the extended Castle family would somehow find their way.

The End.

_**Author's note. Some of you might recognize the end of this from my short story "This Tiny Little Life." No your eyes do not deceive you, I stole from myself. It seemed appropriate and only needed minor tweaking for details. _

_Thank you everyone for reading, I will likely go back to "A Castle in Fortress Europe for the time being, and maybe tweak "Putting In The Work" and finish it after I see more of season 6._

_Thanks for reading._


End file.
